


Thin Ice

by GremlinSR



Series: A Holmes in Konoha [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cutting Edge/Ice Princess Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Romance, Crime Solving, Detective Mayu, F/M, Figure Skater Nara Shikamaru, Figure Skating Mayu, Fluff and Smut, I had to write this, Ice Skating, Kiba is a good bro, Mayu has a Tragic Past, Shikamaru has fangirls, Stalking, past assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-15 17:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 48,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GremlinSR/pseuds/GremlinSR
Summary: Shikamaru is a famous figure skater who needs a temporary partner while his teammate recovers from an injury. Finding one is easier said than done, and he'd just about given up when a girl with no filter, a mysterious past, and a natural talent for ice skating accidentally snarked her way into the tryouts. Now he just has to convince her that they're the perfect pair - both on and off the ice.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Everything I know about ice skating I learned from Disney and Google.

Shikamaru stuck his hands into his hoodie pocket and slouched down, eyes going half-lidded. His mother had forced him to come into the rink with her an hour and a half early. Why she thought he’d want to watch a hockey team smack a puck around the rink for two hours was beyond him. This whole situation was already troublesome enough.

He leaned back against the wall as the rowdy team that had booked the rink for the next hour and a half burst onto the ice. They were yelling back and forth, pushing and jostling at each other. They were an intramural team called the Howlers and were fairly popular on campus.

Shikamaru pulled his hood further down and closed his eyes all the way when a group of giggling girls took the seats closest to the ice, glad that he had sat at the very top row. The last thing he needed was to be recognized by a bunch of fangirls.

“Oh look, it’s Sasuke! Sasuke, hi!” Shikamaru cringed when he heard his childhood friend, Ino’s voice among them. Her last boyfriend must not have worked out. They giggled and whispered amongst each other, squealing as they watched the men and women go through their warm-ups.

“Ugh, Kiba, it’s disgusting in here. Don’t they have a janitor?” a snooty voice said from near the door to Shikamaru’s left.

He stiffened, annoyance at whoever was talking shit about his mother’s rink moving through him. Probably some spoiled kid living off her daddy’s trust fund while she got her degree at Konoha’s prestigious university.

“Mayu, it’s fine. You’re such a whiner,” a familiar voice said and he opened his eyes a fraction and glanced over as Kiba and his large service dog, Akamaru, entered the stands behind an attractive girl whose hair was dyed a dark blue.

Shikamaru and Kiba knew each other from all the skating classes they’d taken at the rink as kids. Shikamaru had ended up continuing his mother’s legacy in competitive figure skating, while Kiba had gone the way of most of the boys in his classes and started playing hockey.

“Fine? There’s a homeless man sleeping up there!” she hissed.

Shikamaru twitched. His hoodie wasn’t _that_ ratty.

“Eh. Whatever. You owe me,” the girl - Mayu - said and wrinkled her nose.

“Oh yeah? We keeping score now? Because if we are, I have a vague memory of driving three hours last weekend in the middle of nowhere to pick up you and Hinata. Where you swore me to secrecy about the lard and tutus -”

Shikamaru was disappointed when she squeaked and slapped a hand over his mouth. He would have liked to know what, exactly, was up with the lard and tutus. Especially if she’d been wearing them. She might be a snob, but she was an attractive one, especially when she blushed.

“Fine, god. At least I can do my homework while you run around bashing people with your little stick,” she muttered.

Kiba grinned when she dropped her hand from his mouth and then patted her head. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I use hockey as a way to reaffirm my masculinity after spending all week trying to teach a bunch of third graders how to do anything more intellectually stimulating than picking their noses.”

Mayu’s lips turned up into a smile even as she rolled her eyes. “Just shut up and go play your ridiculous game,” she said dismissively.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow when Kiba just laughed and bounded down the stairs after telling Akamaru to stay. It wasn’t like him to let it go when somebody talked shit about his job as an elementary school teacher or his favorite game. Come to think of it, Akamaru didn’t deign to spend time with just anybody, either, but he was staring up at Mayu with adoration.

She glanced down at the dog and adjusted her frankly huge backpack on her slim shoulders. “Yeah, yeah, you’re freaking adorable and I should be honored to be your chosen babysitter, I get it. Come on, furball.”

She wrinkled her nose at the girls who were still giggling below. “Well, I know for a fact that the redhead should be studying instead of watching boys. She’s in my advanced chem course and she always looks confused,” Mayu said conversationally to Akamaru as they settled a few benches down from Shikamaru.

Akamaru stretched out his huge bulk on the floor behind her and rested his head next to her thigh. “Yeah, you’re right,” Mayu said, taking three large textbooks and a notebook out. “It wouldn’t make any difference.”

Shikamaru snorted to himself, reluctantly amused by her scathing commentary, then leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes again.

“Man, did you see that shot I made?” Shikamaru jerked awake at the sound of Kiba's voice.

“Yeah, you did a great job hitting a piece of rubber into a net. Congratulations,” Mayu muttered.

Mayu was still sitting with Akamaru and Shikamaru blinked at the number of books and notebooks opened around her. Kiba was grinning down at her, hair and shirt wet with sweat and most likely melted ice.

“Shikamaru!” He sighed and pulled his hood back, then turned to look at his mother slash coach, who was standing with three attractive women with ice skates in hand down by the rink.

“You’ve got ten minutes while the Zamboni smooths the ice before you need to warm up.”

He gave his mother a halfhearted wave and ignored the way the three women were eyeing him with a mixture of interest and avarice. He hefted himself to his feet and reached down to swipe up his skates.

“Hey, Shikamaru!” Kiba called.

He glanced over at him and hopped down from seat to seat with easy strides until he landed next to him. Mayu was staring up at Shikamaru from her spot, wide-eyed.

“Hey, Kiba, how’s it going?” he said.

He reached out and gripped Kiba’s hand, who pulled him forward and thumped his back in an enthusiastic man-hug. “What’s up, man? I didn’t know you were back in town.”

“Yeah. Looking for a partner,” Shikamaru said and tilted his chin at the women who were lacing up their skates and giving each other the stink eye.

“Oh yeah, I heard about Temari’s injury. That sucks.”

Shikamaru shrugged, but his lips tightened. “Yeah. She should be fine in a few months, but I need somebody to get me through regionals.”

“Kiba! You didn’t tell me you know Shikamaru Nara,” Mayu hissed and Shikamaru gave her a dismissive look.

Great, a snob _and_ a fangirl.

“Well, you never told me you were a fan of figure skating,” Kiba said and laughed when Mayu blushed.

“I’m a fan of  _geniuses,_ and Shikamaru Nara is a technical and artistic genius,” she said with a sniff, then turned back to her books in a clear dismissal, though her cheeks were still red.

Shikamaru gave a long, slow blink when she proceeded to ignore them as he talked to Kiba. Well, that was the strangest reaction he’d ever gotten from a fangirl or fanboy. Usually, they’d be attempting to fawn all over him, not talk about him like he wasn’t there and then pretend he didn’t exist.

“We should go out for drinks after this,” Kiba said after a few minutes of catching up.

“Sure. This shouldn’t take too long. You wanna stick around?”

Kiba glanced down at Mayu, who was staring a little too intently at a long equation in one of her books. “You okay with staying and watching a genius at work?” he teased.

She glanced up and shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. I’ve finished up my studying, anyway.”

“Shikamaru!” Yoshino called impatiently from the ice and he sighed.

“Alright, I’m coming, calm down,” he said in a low enough voice that he knew she wouldn’t hear him. “I’ll see you in a bit, Kiba.”

“Yeah, man. Good luck.”

Shikamaru slumped. He’d been looking for a partner to replace Temari for three weeks and was starting to think he’d never find somebody who could keep up with him. If none of these women worked, he’d have to skip competing this year.

“Come on, let’s move closer to the ice,” he heard Kiba say.

“Ugh, fine.”

Shikamaru ignored the three women who were there to try out while he laced up his skates and took off his hoodie so that he was in his track pants and thermal. He tightened his ponytail, then skated out onto the ice, moving through his warmups.

The scrape of his skates across the surface was familiar and soothing, and he let himself fall into a rhythm with his breathing. The rink felt as much like his home as the house where he’d grown up with his mother and father. It was no surprise, really, with how much time he’d spent there as a kid.

He pushed himself into a spin, the satisfaction of a perfectly executed move improving his mood, and his lips quirked up when he heard Ino cheering as he landed. She must have seen him and decided to stick around. It reminded him of hours spent practicing with her for competitions.

Ino had moved on from ice skating when they turned eighteen, deciding to pursue an education in psychology. Shikamaru had stayed and found a partner in Temari. He glanced over as one of the women, a tall brunette with green eyes and a slim build, skated past him.

On the other side of the ice, a blonde was moving into a spin. Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. Her posture was off. It was only by a small margin, but it was enough that he already knew she wouldn’t make the grade. His mom would make him give her a try, anyway, because she was annoying that way.

“That’s enough! Come back in!” Yoshino called and Shikamaru turned and glided back to her, coming to a stop next to her in a spray of ice.

He glanced over at Kiba, who was sitting on the bench right next to the entrance of the rink. Mayu was next to him, watching the proceedings with a thoughtful expression. Akamaru was flopped across their feet, half asleep.

“Shika,” Yoshino said. “This is Pietra, Amy, and Susan. Pietra, you go first.”

One of the two brunettes stepped forward. Shikamaru ran his eyes over her critically. She was in good shape and didn’t hold herself like she had any injuries he needed to worry about.

“Alright,” he said. “What do you want us to do?”

Yoshino listed off a few simple step sequences, spirals, and lifts. Shikamaru cracked his neck and sighed. This whole thing was such a pain, but he knew better than to say that out loud in front of his mother. She was determined to find him a replacement while Temari healed.

He wished Temari was there. She would have talked his mother down from the worst of the women she’d forced him to skate with this past week in her desperation. Well, there was no helping it - Temari had to focus on her physical therapy if she was going to go with him to nationals.

He tilted his head to the side in question and Pietra nodded, expression focused and determined. She was a professional, then. He skated out to the middle of the rink and turned in place, then held his hands out to the sides, palm up. Pietra turned in place until she was standing slightly in front of him and to his left with her back facing him.

She then lifted her hands and placed them into his own.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

It started out well enough. Pietra was a strong skater, and their strokes were in tandem. Then they went into the footwork and it fell apart.

It wasn’t that she was doing it wrong. Pietra was good. She didn’t lose her form and her timing was on point and technically correct.

They couldn’t get their steps to sync. It happened, sometimes, that two skaters were just not well matched, no matter how talented they were as individuals. Five minutes in, when it was time to try the lifts, Pietra skidded to a stop.

She turned and gave him a rueful smile. “Well, that isn’t going to work,” she said and he sighed.

“You’re good,” he said with a shrug and her smile widened.

“So are you, though the whole world already knows that. Damn, I was hoping this would work out,” Pietra said as they both skated back to Yoshino and the two other women.

“Sometimes this happens,” Yoshino said. “But Shika’s right, you’re good. I know a few talented up and comers who are looking for a partner. I’ll drop your name with their coaches.”

Pietra’s whole demeanor brightened. “Oh! That would be fantastic. Thank you so much, Mrs. Nara.”

Yoshino smiled back at her. “No need to thank me. I like to see people with talent and a good head on their shoulders make it.”

Ino sent Shikamaru a sympathetic look, knowing him well enough to recognize when he was sulking. Pietra was probably the most talented potential partner he’d come across, but they were utterly unsuited to each other. Just his luck.

“Alright, Amy, your turn,” Yoshino said as Pietra went and sat down a few rows above Kiba to take off her skates.

Amy was the second brunette. He skated with her and it was...okay. She went through the moves without error, but it all felt very robotic. She lacked passion. Shikamaru knew his mother had seen it, too, from the disappointed turn of her lips.

“Susan, you’re up,” Yoshino said without enthusiasm.

Shikamaru could tell she was already checked out, probably having seen the same issues Shikamaru had in Susan’s warm-ups. Shikamaru resisted the urge to stomp off the ice like the primadonna figure skater his mother never let him become.

Susan gave him a coy smile and he drifted backward when she skated too close to him.

“Hi,” she said and fluttered her fake eyelashes at him.

He kept his expression neutral. Not that he was tempted, anyway, but Shikamaru made it a rule never to date another figure skater. There was too much gossip and in-fighting in the sport as it was. The last thing he needed was a bunch of ESPN reporters hounding him more than they already did.

“Ready?” he asked in a clipped tone and she pouted.

“What, no foreplay?”

“Gross,” he heard the weird girl, Mayu, say before Kiba shushed her and he couldn’t help his small snort of amusement.

Gross was right. “Nah, I’d rather just get this over with,” he said in a bored tone and Yoshino must have found the woman as annoying as he did because she didn’t even look up from her chart to glare at him for being rude.

The whole set was a disaster. Her jumps were off, her form was off, and she spent more time trying to grope him than skate with him.

“Enough!” Yoshino snapped and Shikamaru dropped his hold on Susan’s hips like he’d been burned.

He spun and skated away from her without a word, sending his mother an angry stare. She cringed and mouthed _Sorry_ at him and he sighed.

She knew she’d screwed up by somehow letting an untalented fangirl into tryouts, no need to make her feel worse about it than she probably already did. She was trying to look out for Shikamaru by finding him a suitable partner last minute, after all. He wondered which of her contacts was going to suffer through one of her angry rants and epic retaliations for referring Susan to her.

“What? We weren’t done!” Susan said in a high pitched tone that had Shikamaru gritting his teeth as he stepped out of the rink and sank onto the bench.

What a waste of good napping time.

“Oh, we’re done,” Yoshino said in a cold voice. “I have to say; it’s been awhile since I’ve seen an athlete act so unprofessionally. I’ll be telling the other coaches looking for partners for their male skaters exactly how this tryout went.”

Pietra and Amy were sitting next to each other and watching the drama with wide eyes. His mother was legendary in the business for her temper and nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of it.

“My performance was perfect, though I wouldn’t expect a has-been like you to see it,” Susan said.

Shikamaru stopped mid-motion as he leaned over to untie a skate. If there was one sure way to get a reaction out of him, it was somebody insulting his mother. Before he could speak, however, Mayu cut into the conversation with a snort.

“Yeah, right. If you call a lack of basic understanding of the technical aspects of figure skating, a subpar level of intelligence, and a tendency to sexually harass your partner ‘perfection’ then sure, you get an A-plus.”

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Mayu, who was staring down Susan with a moue of distaste. “You’re only here because you’re in a massive amount of credit card debt and you thought if you could seduce the son of Shikaku Nara you’d get the family to pay your way.

“Looks like you’ll have to get a real job like the rest of us,” Mayu finished as Susan’s mouth gaped open.

“How - how did you know -”

“Basic deduction,” Mayu said, flapping her hand dismissively before putting her nose in the air, ignoring Kiba’s dramatic groan next to her and the way everybody was goggling at her.

“I suppose you think you could skate better than me, huh?” Susan finally snapped, though her cheeks were red and she was avoiding everybody’s gaze.

“Well, yeah,” Mayu said and shrugged. “Though to be fair, my cat could skate better than you.”

Susan’s hands fisted at her sides and Shikamaru couldn’t stop his small smile at her rage. Well, this was turning out to be more interesting than he expected. Yoshino and Ino both looked delighted and Amy and Pietra were trying to hide giggles behind their hands.

“I mean, your timing was all off on your turns, your center of balance was not in your center at all, and don’t even get me started on your form. Pathetic.”

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at that. She wasn’t wrong, but he was pretty sure Kiba would have mentioned it if Mayu was a skater when he introduced them. He was looking as surprised as everybody else by her speech.

“Well, then, let’s see you do it any better,” Susan said triumphantly and Kiba moaned out something that could have been “Oh god, no.”

Mayu rolled her eyes so hard that Shikamaru wondered if it hurt. Was it weird that he found it cute? Maybe she wasn’t as annoying as he initially thought. In fact, he was feeling a little intrigued by her lack of social filters.

“I don’t have any skates with me, obviously.”

“What size are you?” Pietra asked and Mayu glanced back at her.

“Eight.”

“Me too. You can use mine if you want.”

Mayu looked at the skates being held out to her with interest. She glanced over at Shikamaru in question.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Well, this ought to be interesting,” Susan said, then stomped past them and further up into the stands, taking a seat far away from everybody else.

“Mayu,” Kiba said as she slipped out of a pair of worn sneakers and started lacing on the borrowed skates with confident movements. “Do you even know how to skate?”

“Oh, yeah. One of my temporary foster mothers used to be a professional figure skater,” she said absently as she moved onto her second skate and Shikamaru tilted his head to the side.

Not a trust fund baby, after all. Mayu was becoming more and more intriguing by the minute.

“She used to take us skating every Sunday. She was addicted to prescription meds, so it took her a good eighteen months to realize she hated me and kick me out. I learned a lot before then.”

Shikamaru stilled from where he’d been about to stand and everybody else had gone silent and horrified at her declaration. Kiba’s smile faded and he looked sad but unsurprised.

Mayu glanced up when nobody responded and blinked when she took in their expressions. She looked over at Kiba.

“Uh, not good?”

“I bit not good, yeah,” he said gently and reached out to squeeze her arm. If Shikamaru didn’t already know the man was in love with his girlfriend, Tenten, he’d think there was something there.

“Huh,” Mayu said. “People are so sensitive,” she grumbled and went back to her skates.

“Mayu, do you really have to do this?” Kiba asked. “I’m getting tired of spending all my free time picking you up from the hospital after you do something stupid.”

Mayu scoffed and stood. “You’re so dramatic. You’ve had to pick me up six times from the hospital in the past year. That’s hardly every day.”

Shikamaru mouthed  _Are you serious_ at Kiba and he just shrugged and nodded, looking more resigned than anything. Ino looked fascinated, and Yoshino had the same expression on her face that she got when she spotted stray cats. His mother had a  _lot_ of cats.

“You really think one day a week of training for less than two years is going to make you a better skater than Susan?” Amy asked when Mayu started waddling towards the ice.

“Well, yeah, that’s the benefit of being a genius,” Mayu said dismissively. “Plus, I do still skate from time to time.”

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow and wondered whether she’d agree to go on a date with him after she embarrassed herself out on the ice. Her jeans and blue sweater were fitted tightly enough to show that she was curvy in all the right places. Plus, he liked his women a little assertive and a lot crazy. He assumed it was part of his genetic makeup.

He followed her out, watching with interest as her slim thighs worked and she started to glide across the surface gracefully. She spun, the scrape of blades against ice a familiar sound and he had to admit she was reasonably good. When she sped up and went through some fairly complex step sequences, he was reluctantly impressed.

She propelled herself into a lutz jump and he stopped mid-stroke as she landed without a wobble on one foot, skating backward with her other leg lifted behind her, arms out to the side. She raised an eyebrow at him as she drifted past and his lips pulled up into a smile.

She blinked rapidly and looked away, but not before he saw that her cheeks were a little redder than the chill of the rink could account for. He cleared his throat and ignored the heat that coiled in his stomach.

It had been too long since he’d been with somebody, that was all. No way was he engaging with a girl that thought six trips to the ER in one year was reasonable. No matter how attractive and intelligent she was.

Even as he denied that he was seriously interested, he increased his speed, moving up on her right.  He then pushed into a flip jump, making a perfect landing directly in front of her and forcing her to slow down. He could feel her eyes following him as he did another and then another, moving in a circle around her.

An unusual need to show off had hit him and he did a few complicated turns and spins. When he finally stopped, he was in front of Mayu, skating backward and looking as nonchalant as possible. He pointedly didn’t look over at his mother and Ino, who probably had Thoughts and Ideas on his strange behavior.

Mayu was smiling widely at him and she hopped once on her skates in excitement. “Can you do that again? Like, that exact sequence of moves?

Shikamaru tilted his head to the side. “Probably,” he said.

“Okay.” She turned so that she was next to him. “Let’s do this.”

“Do what?” he asked, but she just motioned impatiently at him.

She was such a brat. Shikamaru couldn’t believe he was finding her rudeness adorable, of all things. Knowing better than to argue when a woman started to look impatient, he sped up. Mayu kept pace next to him. Just what was she planning?

He discovered what she had in mind when he went into his first flip jump and she mirrored his move almost perfectly next to him. Their skates hit the ice at the same time and when he lifted into his second one, she was right there with him.

She didn’t have the languid movements that professional skaters who spent eight hours of every single day training did. She also didn’t have the power that Temari put behind every action.

Still, she was surprisingly good at it. Mayu matched every one of his steps and Shikamaru felt that hum of contentment that he’d only ever gotten skating with Temari and Ino. It was accompanied by something clicking into place in his mind that had him adjusting his maneuvers minutely to fit her slight frame and underpowered strokes.

When she put her arms behind her back and added a jaunty jump and twist into the footwork he’d done earlier, he spun around and caught her, hands going to her waist, then pushed her into a simple lift.

She held her form with the sort of trust that made it feel like they’d practiced the move a hundred times before, and when he finally set her down and they came to a stop, he wished they could keep going.

She was breathing hard, though, not used to the rigorous exercise involved in skating. Her feet probably hurt in her borrowed skates, too. Despite all that, she twisted in Shikamaru's hold so that she could beam up at him.

They’d landed with her back to his front, close enough that he could feel the heat of her body through her jeans and hoodie. His thumb and pointer finger had rucked up her hoodie and the shirt underneath and her skin was soft to the touch. He resisted the urge to tug her closer, since he had never been, and never would be, one of those assholes that groped his skating partner.

He couldn’t stop his returning smile, though, and when she bit her lip and let her gaze linger on his mouth, he had to firmly remind himself why dragging her into the locker room would be a terrible idea. Especially if he was going to ask her to be his skating partner until Temari recovered. Which he fully planned to do.

Clapping and cheering broke him from his thoughts and he dropped his hands and pushed himself into a backward glide. “Good job,” he said gruffly.

“Thanks,” Mayu said, but he was already skating away before he made an even bigger idiot of himself. What was wrong with him, anyway?

Susan was gone - probably having left in a huff when she realized that Mayu had some bite to go along with her bark. Ino was giving him an annoying, knowing look and his mother’s expression was determined in a way that made him wary.

Mayu skidded up next to him. “That was so fun!” she said as she stumbled into the stands and flopped down next to Kiba.

“Thanks for letting me use your skates,” she said and Pietra shrugged and smiled.

“It was pretty fun watching you and very fun watching that girl’s face when you showed her up. She gives female figure skaters a bad name,” Pietra said and accepted her skates back with a small smile before standing.

“Well, it was nice meeting all of you. Thank you for the opportunity, Mrs. Nara.”

“Yes, of course,” Yoshino said as she and Amy walked away, but her attention was on Mayu, who was scratching behind Akamaru’s ear and arguing with Kiba about how much sleep a healthy person needed.

“I have things to _do_ Kiba, god, you’re such a mother hen. You and Hinata both. I sleep  _plenty -”_

“Oh, yeah, how many hours did you get last night?”

“I mean, that’s kind of a personal question, don’t you think? Maybe I should tell Tenten that you’re obsessed with me and want to watch me sleep -”

“That isn’t even _close_ to what I said; you are so crazy -”

“So, Mayu, this is our training schedule,” Yoshino said, breaking into their conversation and holding out a piece of paper with an innocent smile on her face.

“Uh,” Mayu said, but reached out to take the paper from her.

“Thank you so much for trying out. I think we can all agree that you’ll be a perfect temporary partner for Shikamaru. Tomorrow is the last day of finals, right? So your schedule should be open after that.”

Mayu’s jaw dropped open. “Um. Listen, Mrs. Nara, right? I wasn’t trying out. Obviously. I mean, I’m not in the kind of shape you need to be in to compete -”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, dear, in two months’ time I’ll have you where you need to be.”

Shikamaru watched, fascinated, as Mayu lost all the color in her face. She really was a genius, if she sensed just how horrifying a statement that was coming from his mother.

“I’m uh, flattered, I guess? But I have a summer internship with the Konoha PD -”

Kiba, who had been watching the proceedings with a raised eyebrow, snorted. “Stalking Fugaku Uchiha does notcount as a summer internship -”

“An _unofficial_ internship,” she cut in and glared at him, “but an important one all the same. I need to start building contacts if I’m going to get a spot on their investigation team after I graduate in the fall.”

Shikamaru, to his surprise, felt the weight of disappointment drop in his stomach. Skating with Mayu had felt right. Out of the dozen women he’d been subjected to by his mother the past week and a half, she had been the only one that had seemed like a proper fit.

“Surely you wouldn’t turn down an opportunity like this one to spend time filing at the police station,” Yoshino said in a condescending tone, and Shikamaru winced at the way Mayu’s face shut down.

She stood and gently laid the schedule down on the bench. “Sorry, Mrs. Nara, but I’m not a figure skater. I’m a detective. Or, well, I will be. It was nice meeting you, though. Kiba, I have your keys - I’ll go start your car and meet you out there.”

Shikamaru watched her as she hefted her bag on her shoulders and moved quickly up the stairs. She whistled once and Akamaru followed.

“Did - did she really just turn that down?” Yoshino asked, voice disbelieving.

Shikamaru couldn’t blame her - most people would fall over themselves for the chance to skate with him. But then, most people he knew were skaters, so.

“It’s her dream to be an investigator on Fugaku Uchiha’s elite investigation team,” Kiba said and his voice was a little cold, for the usually laid back man. “She’s good - really good. She’s completing the Criminal Justice and Forensic Science Masters programs in half the time it takes most people to complete just one. She’s legitimately a genius.”

Yoshino had the grace to look ashamed before her expression went determined. Shikamaru flinched when she spun on her heel and pointed at him.

“Shikamaru, you will convince that girl to skate with you, or so help me, you will be running drills every minute of your miserable life until Temari is back.”

She then turned and stomped away, leaving Shikamaru reeling and terrified. Not an uncommon feeling after talking to his mother.

“So,” he said to Kiba after Ino had finished laughing obnoxiously and turned to follow his mom out of the building, “Still wanna go out for that beer?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that happened. I may have an addiction to writing ridiculous things and then posting them online. I'm just saying.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shikamaru discovers why people are always saying that a Nara in love is a pathetic sight to behold. He also learns more about some of Mayu's interests and hobbies.

Mayu was warm against Shikamaru's side after the chill of Konoha in springtime. Kiba was seated across from them at the booth that they’d scored almost immediately upon entering the bar. He was saving the seat next to him for Tenten, who was going to meet them when she got done with work.

Shikamaru was feeling relaxed and pleasantly buzzed from the beers they’d already consumed. Kiba had told them a few stories about his class of third graders that had Mayu snickering next to him and Shikamaru outright laughing. He firmly believed that out of the two of them, Kiba had the most challenging career.

The bar was fairly crowded, which wasn’t surprising. It was Thursday night and they were only a few blocks from campus. Still, it was fairly quiet at their booth, which was set back from the pool tables and bar.

“So you, uh, have finals tomorrow?” Shikamaru asked when there was a pause in the conversation, pulling his eyes away from the curve of Mayu’s neck to meet her eyes.

He knew from skating in close quarters earlier that they were a dark grey, but they looked black in the dim lighting. She tilted her head up to focus on him and shrugged.

“One, yeah. Chemistry. I have to turn in a final project by four, too.”

“Should you be drinking, then?” he asked, nodding at the pint of ale in her hand.

“Mayu probably knows the subject matter better than her professors,” Kiba said from his spot across the table, pride obvious. “She’d ace it high as a kite and suffering from blood loss. I know that because that’s how she took one of her finals last year and she scored over a hundred percent on it.”

Shikamaru blinked at Kiba. He was joking, right? He reminded himself that he didn’t have the right to give Mayu a lecture on self-care. He’d just met her, after all. He took a large gulp of beer.

Mayu wrinkled her nose. “Not like it’s difficult in the first place. I don’t know where they even find these professors, anyway,” she said, but her cheeks had turned red at the praise, which was pretty cute.

Shikamaru hummed and extended his arm along the booth behind her, trying to hide the action within a stretch. If the way she bit her lip and Kiba narrowed his eyes was any indication, it wasn’t as smooth as he would have liked.

“So you’re pretty smart, then?” he said stupidly, even though what he meant to say was  _please skate with me._ Not only was he breaking a hard personal rule by hitting on somebody that he wanted to compete with, he was doing it badly.

Mayu took a drink of her beer and then looked up at him from under her lashes. His heart stuttered and he cleared his throat and took another deep pull of his drink. He was in so much trouble.

“I mean, if scoring above the 98th percentile on all of the standardized intelligence tests means I’m smart, then yeah, you could say that,” she said and was that supposed to be sexy? Because it was, it definitely was.

“...this is the weirdest form of flirting I’ve ever seen,” Kiba grumbled. “Geniuses shouldn’t flirt, it should be illegal. It’s too painful to watch for the rest of us.”

Shikamaru ignored him in favor of trying to decide if he liked Mayu's hair or her eyes better. They were both pretty fantastic. Especially paired with the way she was trying not to smile at him.

“You should skate with me,” he said and she looked away.

“I can’t. Crimes to solve, you know.”

“Please?” He did his best to look sad and pleading instead of desperate and terrified of his mother.

Mayu ducked her head. “You must be pretty desperate, huh? I’m not even an amateur. You’d be lucky to win a goldfish with me.”

“You’re raw, but my mom’s one of the best coaches in the business and you won’t find a stronger partner than me. We’d place for sure.”

“I told you. I can’t. I’ve got a plan and it doesn’t involve taking two months off to go ice skating.”

“Yeah, her plan is to annoy Fugaku Uchiha into hiring her.” Kiba laughed when Mayu threw a soggy paper coaster at him.

“Whatever,” she said. “Go get another pitcher of beer.”

Akamaru shifted at their feet when Kiba stood to get the next round after some grumbling.

“How do you know each other?” Shikamaru gave in to the urge to pick up a lock of her hair and rub it between his thumb and two fingers. It was soft and cool to the touch and looked black in their dim little corner.

“What, me and Kiba?”

“Yeah. I’ve known him since we were kids - my mom owns the rink and he took a lot of lessons there,” he offered, wondering why he was telling her at all.

He never revealed random, inconsequential things about himself. Shikamaru always figured nobody cared and it was a waste of his breath. Mayu was watching him with wide eyes, though, like everything that came out of his mouth was interesting and important. It made him want to blurt out every detail of his life, just so that she’d keep looking at him.

“Oh, well.” She hesitated and bit her lip. “I met him at one of Tenten’s classes I was taking at the community center. He was filling in for her assistant.”

Shikamaru froze. He had helped Tenten out a few times over the years with her classes. She made most of her money at her father’s dojo, teaching rich kids karate. The self-defense lessons at the community center were something she did in her spare time. It was her way of using her skills for good.

Those classes were full of people with suspicious bruises, guarded eyes, and hard pasts. Tenten taught them to defend themselves because they needed it, because they felt like they had no power and she wanted to give them some.

“Oh yeah?” he forced himself to say, even as a part of him had gone cold and hard at the realization that Mayu had probably gone through something horrible to end up in that class. Somebody had hurt her, at some point. Maybe multiple someones.

Outside of skating, Shikamaru was not a motivated person. He wasn’t particularly vindictive, either. Right now, though, he wanted to find every person who had made Mayu feel like she needed to attend those classes and beat the shit out of them.

“Yep. He...well, you know Kiba. He decided to be my friend and I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“Yeah, that does sound familiar,” Shikamaru said, relaxing back into his seat and deciding to revisit fantasies of destroying anybody who hurt her later. Along with attempting to figure out why he was so invested in her happiness and well-being after knowing her for all of a few hours.

Her own shoulders released tension when she realized he wasn’t going to push her for information on why, exactly, she’d been there. “Yeah. We’ve been friends ever since. I fix stuff in his apartment when it breaks, and he gives me rides places.”

“Yeah, I also feed and water you and remind you to sleep,” Kiba said as he slid back into the booth.

Before Mayu could respond, Tenten appeared at the table. She brightened when she saw Shikamaru and he returned her greeting with a small smile. She’d been dating Kiba for almost four years now, so they knew each other well enough.

“Hey, Mayu. How are finals going?” Tenten asked after her eyes lingered on the way Shikamaru’s arm was now draped around Mayu’s shoulders instead of resting on the booth behind her. When had that happened, anyway?

“Ugh, completely dull. Professor What’s-his-face is so lame, he wouldn’t approve  _any_ of my final project ideas, so I’m stuck doing this one where -”

Shikamaru watched for the next few minutes as her face lit up and her hands moved in broad, expressive gestures while she bitched about her professors not letting her do experiments that did, admittedly, sound fairly dangerous to him. Or just plain gross - why would she want to see the rate that certain molds grow on eyeballs?

Then he spent some time wondering if eyelashes were supposed to grow that long and how the mole he could see just behind her ear through the curtain of her wavy hair would taste. Probably really good.

His fingers were tracing the soft skin of her collarbone above the material of her hoodie. She scooted closer to him as she and Tenten talked about the over-eager parents of the kids Tenten taught at her father’s dojo until she was practically plastered against his side.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” Mayu announced. “I’ll bring back another round.”

Shikamaru nodded, then swallowed when she reached over and patted his thigh in what he assumed was a goodbye. Her cheeks were flushed from the alcohol they’d consumed and he was feeling a little floaty himself.

“Dude,” Kiba said and Shikamaru tore his eyes away from her ass as she made her way through the crowd.

“Hmm?” he said, not missing the way Kiba was staring him down.

“Listen, Mayu’s an adult and can make her own decisions, but you should know. She doesn’t do casual  _anything_. It’s not in her makeup, man. You sleep with her, it’s going to hurt her when you don’t call. And Mayu doesn’t need anyone else hurting her.”

Shikamaru paused mid-sip of his beer and set the glass down on the table, annoyed at the way Tenten was looking at him like he was some sort of evil Mayu heart-breaker.

“Yeah, and who says I wouldn’t call?” he drawled.

Kiba frowned and exchanged one of those meaningful couples looks with Tenten. “I mean, I’ve never known you to have a serious girlfriend. Which is fine - you’ve got your career to worry about, and I know you think relationships are a pain. Just be careful with her, alright? She’s tough as nails, but her heart is...”

“Fragile,” Tenten supplied when Kiba trailed off and he recognized that look in her eyes. It was the same one his mother gave him earlier that night that promised death for noncompliance.

Shikamaru remembered the way he wanted to kill random people he’d never met at just the hint that they’d hurt her and sighed.

“Kiba, you know me. I’m good at reading people. I already understood that she wasn’t somebody who would appreciate a one night stand.”

Kiba relaxed back against the booth. “Alright. I know you aren’t an asshole, I just...sometimes people get the wrong idea about her.”

Shikamaru narrowed his eyes. “Oh yeah? Point them out to me sometime, huh?”

Kiba blinked a few times and then a slow smile spread across his face. “Oh man.”

Shikamaru gave Kiba a leery look, aware that he was about to be on the receiving end of some ribbing.

“Oh shit. I can’t believe this.  _The_ Shikamaru Nara, finally finding a girl that he feels more than a passing interest for. Oh god, and it’s Mayu! This is perfect. You’ve spent years acting like a smug bastard for avoiding the  _annoyance_ of romance, and then you go and fall for the biggest pain in the ass of all.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Shikamaru grumbled and ignored Tenten’s giggling as he skulked away from the booth.

Kiba was reading too much into it. Just because he found her intriguing and beautiful and kind of wanted to bury his face into her neck and just breathe for a while didn’t mean...

Right. He was going to stop thinking about her and take a piss. Otherwise, he was going to have a mental breakdown in the hallway over the fact that he was pining after a woman he’d just met.

He glared down at the urinal as he went. He was not falling for anybody. Certainly not a snooty, trouble-making, perfect - god _dammit._ He zipped up his pants with more force than was strictly necessary and went to wash his hands.

He’d just stepped out of the bathroom when somebody latched onto the front of his thermal and started dragging him down the dim hallway in the opposite direction of the bar. It was Mayu, and his protests died in the back of his throat when she glanced over her shoulder at him and grinned. Well, it couldn’t hurt to see what she wanted.

He frowned when she led him to a brown door with chipped paint and a sign announcing that only employees were welcome beyond it. So, of course, she opened it and tugged him inside without a hint of discomfort. He only had a moment to take in the shelves full of kegs and the crates of beer piled up in the middle of the space before Mayu shoved him against the closed door and fisted both her hands in his shirt.

“What -” she pulled him down and went up on her toes and then they were kissing.

Her lips were just as soft as they looked, and her body slotted against his, warm and supple in all the right places. He was immediately dizzy with it - her taste, her warmth, the way one of her small hands slid up his chest to cup the back of his neck.

Then she opened her mouth and he slid his tongue inside and that was it - rational thought was no longer in the building. His hands slid to her hips and tugged her closer. She made a small, happy sound in the back of her throat and her other hand went around his neck, too.

Mayu was good at kissing, which didn’t surprise him. She was probably good at everything she did. She angled her head to the side and did something with her tongue that had his toes curling. Then he thought about how that talented tongue would feel against his cock and went from half-hard to fully-hard in his track pants. She arched against him, sending a pulse of pleasure into his abdomen and making the muscles there clench.

His skin felt too tight for his body and all he could think about was how good she tasted and how much he wanted to be inside her. His hand wandered down to her ass, which was just as perfect as he imagined, and he slipped a thigh between her legs.

Then he tugged her in and up and she gasped into his mouth, her whole body shuddering when he did the motion again.

“Just like that, baby,” he pulled back to say when she arched forward as he encouraged her to ride his thigh.

His mouth went to her neck and he licked at the mole he’d been staring at all night. He’d been right, she tasted amazing. Her hands gripped his shoulders and she arched back as her body moved against his.

Her stomach rubbed against his dick with every upward thrust of her body and it was just enough friction to send small bolts of pleasure up his spine. He hunched over and followed the line of her collarbone with his tongue, which pulled another one of those fantastic sounds from her.

He was surrounded by her smell - dizzy with it - and his free hand reached up to unzip her sweater. She was wearing a scoop-necked shirt that looked black, but it was hard to tell in the storage room, which was only lit by a small strip of lighting on the far side of the space.

He tugged the collar down and to the right impatiently, revealing the pale swell of her breast and a white bra. He ran his tongue along the edge of the fabric and she ground herself against him with more force and made a choked off sound.

The tension in his body coiled tighter and he fumbled to pull her bra out of the way while still keeping his hold on her. She was clutching at the back of his head now, gasping into his ear. Her hips were still moving against him and he could feel her body going rigid against his. She was close, then.

“Yeah, fuck, that’s it,” he said and tightened his hold on her ass to haul her up against his leg with more pressure.

The angle was awkward and he was getting a crick in his neck, but it would take a lot more than simple discomfort to keep him from putting his mouth on her perfect breast.

“Shikamaru,” she gasped when he circled his tongue around her nipple.

He made a low, satisfied sound at the way she said his name; like it was a benediction, like he was the only thing that mattered. He took her nipple into his mouth and rolled his tongue around it. Her breasts were incredible.

His head felt fuzzy and he was overheated and that crick in his neck was making itself known. But when she twisted his shirt in her hands and shuddered against him while she came, making small, adorable sounds of pleasure, he couldn’t think of any position he'd rather be in.

“Oh,” she breathed when her muscles finally relaxed.

He gave her nipple one more swipe of his tongue before straightening and leaning back against the wall. Shikamaru ran his eyes over her and couldn’t stop his masculine swell of pride at how completely wrecked she looked. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her urgently, rolling his hips against her in an attempt to relieve the pressure on his dick.

She responded beautifully, going up on her toes and plastering herself against him and not cringing away from his desperate, somewhat sloppy kiss.

“I want to fuck you so bad,” he said in a rough voice after pulling back. “You’re so...”

His fingers went to the button of her jeans, intent on getting them down over her hips. His whole body froze when her hands grabbed his, stopping the motion. He blinked down at her but obediently moved his hands to grasp her hips instead.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to push.”

She looked more amused than upset, luckily, but he was still kicking himself. He was never presumptuous with his partners, but then he’d never wanted somebody the way he wanted Mayu.

“I’m not letting you fuck me in a disgusting storage room at a bar, Shikamaru.” He couldn’t help but sway forward when she said his name again.

“Right. Of course. Sorry,” he repeated, sounding dazed even to himself, eyes riveted to her lips. She’d probably let him kiss her again, right?

Sure, it sucked that he’d go home without getting off - it really, really sucked - but seeing her like this was enough.

Her lips twitched and she leaned forward, running the fingers of one hand down his chest. “But I could blow you, if that’s something you’re interested in.”

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. “What? I mean. Yes. Okay. That would be. Yes, please.”

Her smile widened and he inhaled sharply when she sank to her knees. He carefully laid both of his hands flat against the door, worried that he’d get overeager again and do something stupid to fuck up this extremely fantastic thing that was about to happen to him.

He could hear the music on the other side of the door and the sounds of people moving around in the hallway. He really hoped that the bartender had everything he needed up front, at least for the next - well, five minutes. Shikamaru would probably be lucky to make it that long, he was so turned on by just the thought of her sucking him off.

He shivered when her hands drifted to the elastic band of his pants and tugged them down to his thighs along with his underwear. He breathed out a sigh of relief when the cool air touched his skin.

“Oh, he’s kind of cute, isn’t he?” she said when she caught sight of his penis, sounding delighted.

Shikamaru thought about being offended for a good two seconds, but he couldn’t really be sad about her being so charmed by his dick. There were worse reactions she could have had, that was for sure.

Her hand wrapped around him and he moaned and twitched his hips forward. She moved it up and down his length a few times, tilting her head to the side and watching him disappear in and out of her fist with interest.

He pressed his hands against the wood harder and firmly told himself not to come yet. That would be embarrassing. The crinkling sound of foil pulled his attention back to her and he blinked when she pulled a condom out of her pocket.

Had she had that the whole time? Did she just carry one around with her? The horrible possibility that Kiba had been wrong and this was just a casual fling to Mayu had his shoulders slumping and his chest tightening.

She glanced up at him and frowned, then followed his gaze down to condom in her hand. Her strokes on his dick faltered and she looked back up at him.

“The bathroom,” she said.

“What?” he asked, confused by the non sequitur.

“You’re wondering why I have a condom so handy. I got this, just now, from the machine in the girl’s bathroom. Though honestly, men carry around condoms and nobody accuses them of being easy,” she grumbled and he inhaled a breath.

“I’d never - I didn’t think you were easy. That’s a terrible thing to think about a woman, or anybody.”

Her eyes were wide as she stared up at him and he realized how absurd it was to have this conversation while she was on her knees with his erection in her hand. Still, he couldn’t have her thinking he was some kind of neanderthal that thought women shouldn't enjoy sex whenever they wanted, or something. 

“I just, uh. I was hoping this wasn’t just...” he motioned around the storage room, cheeks red, and she bit her lip to stop her smile.

“Well, I don’t sleep with just anyone, you know,” she said loftily. “My body is a  _temple,_ after all, and you can’t just let the disgusting masses put their hands all over a temple.”

He frowned and opened his mouth to respond because he was fairly certain that metaphor didn’t work. Weren't temples generally there for everyone? Then she was rolling the condom on over his cock and following it with her mouth and everything except the bolts of pleasure moving up and down his spine became secondary.

Her hand was at the base, presumably holding the condom in place, and when she pulled back she added just enough suction to make him feel it. He watched, entranced, as she ran her tongue around the head and then wrapped her lips back around him and bobbed her head forward, taking half of him into her mouth.

“God, that’s good,” he said, resisting the urge to reach forward and tangle his hands in her hair when she slid her tongue along the bottom of his shaft.

Her eyes moved up to meet his gaze as she pulled back and when she went back down she took in a half inch more than she had the first time. He moaned and couldn’t help the small thrust of his hips when he hit the back of her throat.

He’d never seen somebody look smug while sucking his cock before, but Mayu was somehow managing it. It was adorable and sexy and he was fairly certain he’d never met such a ridiculous person before in his life. Then she reached forward and grabbed his hand from where he was pressing it against the door.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed out when she put it on the back of her head and applied pressure to it, encouraging him to press her head forward.

He did so, hesitantly, and the tension at the base of his spine grew more pronounced when she docilely took more of him into her mouth. He licked his lips and relaxed his hold and she pulled back, opening her mouth wide at the end and doing something to the tip of his penis with her tongue that had him pressing her back down on him before he could think better of it.

She moaned around him and one of her hands went to his hip and pulled him forward just as he pressed her head further along his shaft. He made a choked off noise when her nose touched skin.

She didn’t gag or otherwise react negatively and the feeling of her swallowing around him had every muscle locking into place as his orgasm exploded out of him.

“Oh fuck,” he moaned and hunched over her, his other hand flying forward to grasp her head and lightly hold her in place.

He wished he was actually coming down her throat and the next throb of his release was more intense at the image of it. “You’re taking me so well. Shit, you’re so good at this,” he said, panting as his orgasm continued to move through him.

He hadn’t had one this intense for...well, for a long time. She didn’t struggle against his hold, instead continuing to run her tongue along him and add as much suction as she could until he collapsed back against the door, gasping for air.

She pulled off of him and stood and there was no way he wasn’t kissing her again when he caught sight of her swollen lips and red cheeks. She melted against him and he hummed his contentment when he pulled back and couldn’t resist kissing the end of her nose.

She smiled and ducked her head. “Um. We have somewhere between five and ten minutes before somebody comes in here,” she said and his brow furrowed as he tried to catch up with the switch in gears.

“I - okay. How do you know that?” he asked, clearing his throat as she adjusted her bra and shirt until they were back in place and zipped up her hoodie.

He wrinkled his nose but pulled his pants on over his condom-covered dick. He’d swing by the bathroom to clean up on his way back to the bar. At least it had cubicles with doors.

“I timed the movements of the staff throughout the night,” she said with a shrug.

Shikamaru tried to convince himself in the firmest manner possible that he was not one of those idiots that fell in love with a girl he just met. It wasn’t very convincing and he was starting to realize just how screwed he really was.

“Right. Well, um, I guess I’ll see you out there,” Mayu said awkwardly and he snapped out of his dismay just in time to catch sight of her disappointed expression before she opened the door, causing him to stumble forward, and slipped out into the hallway.

“Wait!” he said, but she was already gone.

“Shikamaru, you are such an idiot,” he grumbled.

By the time he returned from cleaning up, Mayu was back in the booth with a pitcher of beer. She was also sitting between Tenten and Kiba on one bench, who was sitting at the end of the booth and glaring at Shikamaru. Mayu wasn’t meeting his eyes and Shikamaru was starting to feel a little panicky.

He should have told her immediately that he wanted to see her again, not stood there like an idiot while she stared at him. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He slid into the booth across from her and tried to catch her eye, but she just studied the beer in her hand.

“So,” Kiba said awkwardly, “we’re getting a new batch of dogs in to train next week.”

Tenten and Mayu both made sounds of excitement. Kiba worked part-time at a kennel that specialized in training service animals. He usually wrangled his friends into volunteering a few times a year and Shikamaru was no exception during the offseason when he was staying at his parent’s house in Konoha and training.

Before anybody could reply a notification sounded from Mayu’s phone, which was face down on the table. She brightened and snatched it up as Kiba groaned.

“Mayu, you cannot be serious, it's practically the middle of the night.”

She cheered after catching sight of whatever was on her screen and scrambled to grab her coat from the back of the booth. “Somebody just committed an armed robbery downtown. Gotta go, Kiba.”

Kiba glared at her and didn’t budge. Shikamaru just blinked at them. Was she...excited because somebody had just committed a crime?

Mayu sighed explosively and proceeded to crawl over the seat behind Kiba, who made affronted squawking noises as she kicked him in the face and knocked his beer over with her jacket.

“Mayu, I can’t drive you -”

“It’s fine, I called an Uber!” she said as she struggled into her coat and shoved her wallet into a pocket. “I’ll grab my backpack from you on my way to school tomorrow.”

Shikamaru’s eyes widened in alarm. Was she leaving? He stood so fast he knocked over his own beer, making Kiba and Tenten scramble to get out of the path of the liquid as it headed for their end of the table.

“Mayu, wait -” she turned and met his gaze and he relaxed minutely when he realized she was going to listen to him.

“Right, I was wondering, can I -” her phone dinged and she looked down.

“Uber’s here, gotta run!” she called and slipped into the crowd around them.

“Wait!” Shikamaru moved to follow her, but it was much more difficult to get his bulk through the crowd than it was for her to maneuver her slight frame around it. By the time he burst outside Mayu was climbing into the back of a white corolla. She didn’t look back.

“Fuck,” he said and ran his hand along the top of his head before turning to make his way back into the bar.

He sulked up to the table and sat down, watching with a scowl as Tenten and Kiba mopped up the spilled beer. “Does she always just...take off like that?” he finally snapped and Kiba sighed.

“Yeah, basically. What the hell happened, anyway? You were both gone forever and Mayu came back looking like a puppy who’d been kissed and then kicked. And then  _you_ came back looking like a puppy who had been kissed and then -”

“Yes, I get it. There was a - a - misunderstanding, I think. Listen, Kiba, I need her number,” he said and leaned forward. “If I can just talk to her -”

“Kiba is not giving out a girl’s number without her permission, no matter how good of buddies you are,” Tenten said in a flat tone.

Shikamaru blinked, then cringed. “No. That’s not - of course not. I just.”

He slumped down in his seat. He had met the girl of his dreams and then he totally blew it. Everybody who had ever told him he was a genius was wrong.

“Jesus, dude, you look fucking tragic,” Kiba said and Shikamaru just slunk down further and crossed his arms over his chest.

Kiba turned to look at Tenten and they had another annoying conversation with their eyes. Then he turned back to Shikamaru. “Alright. I’ll give her your number and tell her you want to talk to her, alright?”

Shikamaru perked up at that. Then he took in Kiba’s pitying expression and his eyes narrowed. “You don’t think she’ll call,” he said in realization.

Tenten and Kiba’s gazes both darted away from him and he sighed. “What the hell? I thought you said she doesn’t do casual hookups.” He was  _not_ whining, no matter how petulant his voice had gone.

“Man, that’s not...” Kiba ran a hand through his hair before blowing out a frustrated breath of air. “It’s not because she won’t want to call. She was into you before you pulled...whatever stupid genius shit you pulled.”

“Okay,” Shikamaru said, brow furrowing. “So then what’s the problem?”

Kiba’s fingers tapped on the table and Shikamaru could see he was weighing his words carefully. Kiba wasn’t one to filter himself, so Shikamaru straightened, realizing whatever he was about to say was important.

“You remember those rescue dogs I helped my mom with the summer we turned eighteen?” Kiba finally said.

“I do.” They had been saved from a farm where they spent most of their lives on a chain in the barn.

“Well, you remember how long it took me to get even a modicum of trust from them?”

“Yeah. You used to just sit out in the kennels with them for hours reading, just to get them used to you.”

Shikamaru had spent a lot of time over at Kiba’s that summer, dozing on the hay bales while Kiba talked to the guarded animals in low, soft tones. Once Kiba had knocked over a rake that was leaning against the wall while petting one and it hadn’t let him touch it for a week after.

“Well. Starting a friendship with Mayu was a lot like that. She has a hard time believing that somebody cares for her until they spend a lot of time proving it to her. Before Tenten and I, Mayu didn’t have anybody. Well, she had Fugaku looking out for her as well as he could, but he’s not exactly effusive with affection,” Kiba corrected himself.

Shikamaru felt like his chest had folded in on itself and he pushed his beer, which Kiba had refilled, away. “Was it really that bad?”

“It was,” Kiba said, looking down at the table and shrugging uncomfortably.

Tenten spoke up from next him. “A lot of people let Mayu down before she found us and Hinata. You’d better not become one of them, Shikamaru,” Tenten warned.

Shikamaru was appropriately terrified. Why were all the women in his life so aggressive towards him?

“I won’t be,” he said and he knew from Kiba’s satisfied expression that he took it for the promise it was.

Shikamaru was a patient man. He’d spend as much time as it took to convince Mayu that he was there to stay.

000

She didn’t call or text the next day. Shikamaru spent most of the morning hungover and miserable and avoiding his mother.

He wondered how Mayu’s test had gone. Then he remembered that she had bounded off to what he was fairly certain was a crime scene the night before, and that she’d been to the ER  _six times_ that year.

 _Have you heard from Mayu? Did she make it home okay?_ he texted Kiba at 10:01 a.m. from the hallway closet on the second floor of his house.

Then he stared at the screen, willing Kiba to answer. At 10:52, Shikamaru jolted out of a doze from where he was slumped against the wall at the notification of an incoming text.

_She’s fine. Just finished her final._

Shikamaru breathed out in relief, then stilled when he heard footsteps coming down the hall, followed by his mother’s voice.

“All I’m saying, Todd, is that you sent me a talentless golddigger when I asked if you knew of any potential partners for my son. Is this some passive-aggressive way of telling me you think Shikamaru isn’t a champion? Because I have a few gold medals that say otherwise -”

Her voice trailed off as she stalked down the hall and Shikamaru couldn’t help but feel for Todd. He actually kind of owed him for his role in helping him find Mayu.

Shikamaru held out for another five minutes before he texted Kiba again.

_How did her final go?_

This time it only took sixty seconds to get a reply.  _Jesus, man, ur acting like a stalker calm down._

Shikamaru slumped. He wasn’t a  _stalker._ A moment later three little dots appeared at the bottom of the chat window and he brightened.

_Just asked. It was and I quote ‘something even a baby gorilla could pass, why are you even asking me this do you think I’m an idiot’_

Shikamaru was grinning stupidly down at his phone when the door was flung open and he fumbled the device with an undignified yelp before catching it. Yoshino was staring down at him, hands on her hips and eyebrows almost to her hairline.

“Really, Shikamaru? I thought you outgrew hiding from me when you were sixteen.”

“Uh,” he said and she sighed.

“I made you a smoothie. Go downstairs and drink it, then hit the treadmill. You have beer calories to work off. Then, do your weight training.”

Shikamaru skulked out of the closet, ignoring the grey and white cat weaving its way around his mother's legs. How did that woman always know where he was, anyway?

000

He woke up at nine the next morning and stared at his phone. Still nothing from Mayu.

 _You gave her my number right_ , he sent to Kiba.

_Yes. I gave it to her and told her u want to have her babies and marry her and let her terrorize u 4 life._

Shikamaru glared. Had Kiba really said that to Mayu? Because that was...well. It wasn’t wrong, but it was probably a little strong to come on after one ice skating session and the exchange of sexual favors in a back room of a bar.

 _She hasn’t texted,_ he settled on after deleting the sad face emoji he originally added at the end of the message.

_Dont know wut 2 tell u man._

Shikamaru huffed and tossed his phone on the table with too much force when he reached the kitchen. Then he dove to catch it when it almost slid off the other side, jarring the table and causing his father’s coffee to slosh over his paperwork and the dishes to clatter.

If his phone broke, he’d miss any texts or calls from Mayu and she’d think he was blowing her off again. He studied the screen for cracks or imperfections and sighed in relief when it looked unharmed. When he looked up Shikaku was staring at him with raised eyebrows.

“Everything alright, son?”

Shikamaru shrugged and went to pour himself a cup of coffee. “I guess,” he grumbled. “Where’s mom?”

“Out shopping,” Shikaku said, then huffed out a laugh when Shikamaru sagged over his cup in relief.

His phone buzzed and he scalded himself when he almost dropped his mug in his rush to get to it. It was another message from Kiba.

_Tenten says to calm down._

“Fucking Kiba,” he said, disappointment bringing a scowl to his face.

“Shikamaru.”

He didn’t look over at his father, instead choosing to busy himself with putting together a plate and sitting at the table. He then poked half-heartedly at his omelet. He glanced at his phone. Still dark. Shikaku sighed but went back to his now-soggy paperwork.

Was it normal to be this invested after one night? Maybe Kiba was right. Maybe Shikamaru  _was_ a stalker. If he was a stalker, his mom was going to kill him.

“How long did it take you to figure that mom was, you know.” He cut himself off before he said something stupid like  _the one,_ they weren’t in The Matrix, here.

He shoved a bite of eggs into his mouth and chanced a glance up at his father. He looked like he was trying not to laugh. Dammit, Shikamaru knew this had been a mistake.

“Never mind,” he said and took an angry sip of his still-too-hot coffee. Ouch.

“The first time I met your mother,” Shikaku began in a slow, thoughtful tone and Shikamaru perked up and looked over at his father. He was staring into space with a small smile on his face. God, he was so whipped. Didn’t he see how crazy his wife was?

“We were waiting in line to get into a club. She was in front of me with your aunt.” Shikamaru had heard this story before, but let Shikaku continue. This time it was for science, after all.

“Some guy next to me reached out and grabbed her ass. When she turned around, she thought it had been me. Knocked me down with one punch,” he said fondly.

“Yeah, dad, that’s...terrifying. I also remember Uncle Ensui saying she gave you a concussion, so, really romantic.”

Shikaku raised an eyebrow in that way that meant he was about to drop something huge on Shikamaru. Of course, he paused to take a drink of coffee, first.

“Your Uncle just thought that I had a concussion - for good reason, too. I couldn’t string more than a few nonsensical words together for the next forty-five minutes.”

“Right,” Shikamaru said slowly. “Mom felt bad about punching the wrong person. So after she punched the right one, she and Aunt J took you to the hospital.”

Shikaku hummed. “I didn’t have a concussion, Shikamaru. I was just so overwhelmed by your mother that I couldn’t, well, function.”

Shikamaru frowned. “But the way mom tells it, she pursued you.”

“It probably looked that way,” Shikaku said with a shrug and leaned back, expression rueful. “I honestly just couldn’t get it together enough that first night to let her know I was interested. She literally and figuratively knocked me off my feet.”

“That’s...actually kind of sweet,” Shikamaru grumbled.

He played with his food, twirling the fork around his plate and ignored his father’s patient demeanor as he waited for Shikamaru to fess up to why he was acting like a spaz.

“So then it’s not...uncommon. To feel that way about somebody right away.”

Shikaku’s eyes sharpened. “I wouldn’t say that. It’s not uncommon for Nara men, perhaps. You know Ensui and Eiji are high school sweethearts. And I just told you about your mom. I think it’s because we’re good at reading people.

“If you’re worried that your feelings aren’t real, well. Only you can decide that. It was real for me, and it was real for Ensui. Your grandmother always said that the stupider a Nara man acts, the more in love he is.”

Shikamaru didn’t bother trying to pretend he wasn’t asking because he was having his own love crisis. They were both too intelligent to fall for that ruse.

“But - what would you have done if mom wasn’t as...um...aggressive. Like, if you had to pursue her in the beginning.”

When he chanced a glance at Shikaku, both his eyebrows had climbed his forehead.  “Son,” he said carefully, “I know you and I haven’t talked a lot about dating before. But if this girl is turning you down...you’ve got to respect that.”

Shikamaru looked up, alarmed. Why did everybody assume he was a stalker? “No! It’s not that she isn’t - I mean. She’s interested. Or she was. Last night.”

His cheeks reddened and he wondered if he could go back in time and drown himself before this conversation ever happened.

“...Okay,” Shikaku said. “That. Well, that’s a good sign, son.”

Shikamaru stared at him. “Oh my god. You’re going to be useless at helping me with this, aren’t you,” he groaned.

Shikaku sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m the best strategist this city has ever seen. I’m sure I can help you come up with something. As long as I’m not the one in love, it should be fine.”

Shikamaru narrowed his eyes. This felt like the blind leading the blind, but it was better than asking his mother or his uncle or one of his cousins. They would be unbearable about it for the rest of his life.

“She doesn’t trust easily,” Shikamaru said with a shrug. “I think her life has been...hard.”

Shikaku’s brow furrowed. “Well. Maybe you need to start there.”

“Yeah, great, thanks, dad. That’s not vague advice at all.”

Shikaku sighed and grumbled something about how Shikamaru was just like his mother. If that were true, though, he wouldn’t be having this issue in the first place.

“Shikamaru. Prove to her that you’re trustworthy and the rest will come. Be her friend first - show her you’re interested in her as a person. Maybe leave sex at the door for awhile, though it sounds like that ship has already sailed.”

Shikaku looked down at his papers. “This wouldn’t happen to be the girl that your mother spent half the weekend complaining about because she turned down a partnership with you, and the other half worrying over because she doesn’t know how to take care of herself and grew up in foster homes?”

Shikamaru slumped down further and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Hmm. Mixing business with pleasure.”

“I know, dad. It’s not...ideal.”

Shikaku lifted his head and studied him. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Shikamaru,” he said after an uncomfortable moment. “You’ll do what’s best for you, and for this girl.”

Shikamaru sighed. He hoped his father was right.

000

_9:08 PM: You have to give me something._

_10:14 PM: Seriously I promise I’ll leave her alone if she tells me to go away._

_11:00 PM: I thought we were friends_

 

Shikamaru resisted the urge to punch the air when Kiba finally gave into his pleading that night.

 

_11:02 PM: Jesus dude ur pathetic._

_11:03 PM: She gets off her graveyard shift at 7:30am she likes mochas with coconut milk._

_11:03 PM: If this blows up u didnt get the info from me._

 

Shikamaru breathed out when the address of the all-night deli Mayu apparently worked nights at popped up on his screen. Seven-thirty. He could do that.

He wouldn’t get a lot of sleep, but if he told Yoshino that he had gone to talk to Mayu, she’d let it go. She’d spent the day keeping her promise and making him run drills for his failure to get Mayu to skate with him, after all.

It was enough to make him wish he had listened to his grandfather and gone into politics like Shikaku.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shikamaru gets pulled along on an adventure, and we learn more about Mayu's past. A few of our favorite police officers make an appearance, too.

Shikamaru was standing in front of the entrance to the deli at seven-twenty the next morning, two coffees gripped in his hands. He was leaning against a bike rack in an attempt to look less awkward than he was feeling but was fairly certain it wasn’t working.  

He’d barely slept the night before, nerves keeping him awake, and had panicked that morning when he opened his closet and found mostly athletic wear. In the end, he’d unearthed a pair of jeans his mother had bought him that were perhaps a little _too_ well fitted, and a green pullover to keep the chilly spring air at bay. He’d also put in his small hoop earrings instead of the studs he wore while skating, and spent extra time on his hair.

His father had just given him a raised eyebrow when he slunk through the kitchen and into the garage after making sure his mother was busy elsewhere. Luckily, he’d kept any opinions to himself.

“Hey, be careful with that!” His head jerked up at the sound of Mayu’s voice.

She was stumbling out of the building, juggling her jacket and backpack. A middle-aged man wearing a nametag that identified him as _Joe, Manager_ was standing at the door holding an opaque plastic container in his hands.

He shoved it against her chest and she squeaked when the contents jostled. “You’ve totally ruined it!” she wailed. “Six weeks of data, _gone -”_

“Six weeks? Nomaka, are you saying you’ve had dead mice in my refrigeration unit for _six weeks?”_

“Um.” Mayu’s eyes darted to the side. Shikamaru wondered if he’d heard that right. Dead mice?

“I’m sure this goes without saying, but you’re fired.”

“What? But - but why? There was no danger, they were in an airtight container! I ran out of room in my own fridge for experiments, and it’s not like I killed those mice myself; they were already dead!”

Shikamaru stared up at the sky and thought about turning around and pretending he’d never been there. He could just forget he ever met her and probably avoid a lot of troublesome situations in the future.

When he brought his attention back to Mayu, however, she was slumped over and her lower lip was sticking out. Well, that was fetching. He stayed where he was.

“Mayu, hand over your keys,”  _Joe, Manager_ said, tone unimpressed and hand held out palm-up.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Mayu grumbled. “This place obviously has no appreciation for science.”

Shikamaru looked up at the sign. Yep, it was still a deli. Were delis supposed to have an appreciation for science? He made a mental note never to eat there. They had, after all, housed dead rodents in their fridge for six weeks.

He watched as she handed over the keys with a glare and  _Joe, Manager_ turned and stomped back into the store without looking back. Mayu looked down at the container in her hands with a mournful expression.

“Sorry, better luck next time,” she said to it, then turned and tossed it into the garbage can next to the deli's door.

He watched as she tugged on her jacket and pulled her hair out of its ponytail. It just reached her shoulders when it was down and Shikamaru spent a few happy seconds recalling how soft it was.

She turned to face him and froze mid-motion as she tugged on her backpack. “Shikamaru!”

“Uh.” He cleared his throat before thrusting one of the coffees in his hands towards her. “I got you a mocha.”

She blinked rapidly and her eyes went to the coffee in his hand. “Um. Thank you?”

She stepped forward and reached out to take it from him. His heart thumped when her fingers brushed against his and he didn’t miss the red tinge to her cheeks when she brought it to her lips and took a careful sip.

“Oh! You ordered it with coconut milk. It’s my favorite,” she said with a happy sigh and took a bigger drink.

Shikamaru was _not_ feeling the same way he did when he finished a perfect set that he knew would win him a competition just because Mayu liked the coffee he got her. That would be crazy.

“Kiba told me you liked it that way,” he blurted, then winced. “I, uh, wasn’t supposed to admit he told me how to get in touch with you.”

Mayu looked down at her feet. “You wanted to get in touch with me?”

“Kiba said he gave you my number.” His eyes narrowed. It wasn’t like Kiba to not follow through, but...

“Well, yeah, but I figured you did that to get him off your back.”

Shikamaru gave her a blank stare and she scuffed a foot on the ground. Just when he thought she couldn’t get any cuter.

“I know he’s overprotective,” she explained. “Which is _crazy,_ I have a brown belt in karate and I’m pretty good at Krav ma gra...” she cleared her throat, then shrugged.

“You think I asked Kiba to give you my number because I’m scared of him?”

Mayu looked up at him. “Well. Akamaru and Tenten are pretty scary, at least.”

They stared at each other and then Mayu giggled and he laughed. “Yeah, they are. But, uh. I meant to ask you if you’d...like to see me again while we were at the bar. But you ended up having an emergency...armed robbery?”

Mayu brightened. “Oh, yeah! It was so fun.”

He blinked, unsure how an armed robbery could ever be classified as fun. “Huh. Well. Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Want to see me again?”

Mayu’s eyes narrowed at him. “Are you just here because you want me to skate with you?”

Shikamaru sighed and looked up at the sky. “Do I seem like the type to whore myself out for skating favors?”

Mayu snickered and shook her head. “Not really, no.”

“Well. While yes, I would be forever grateful if you decided to skate with me so that my mother stops her reign of terror, that’s not why I’m here.”

“I - yeah. Okay. I’ll text you.”

Shikamaru resisted the urge to thrust his hands in the air in victory. Instead, he took a sip of his coffee and put one hand in his pocket.

“What are you doing now?” he asked, tone purposefully bland. Seeming over-eager was probably bad.

“Oh. Um. Actually, I need to get to my internship - shit, I’m late,” she said, looking down at her phone with a frown. “I’ve got to go. But -”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said, not wanting to leave her quite yet.

“Oh. I don’t have a car. I don’t drive at all, actually. The station is only four blocks away. Usually, I just walk.” She turned to look at the deli and sighed. “It was part of the appeal of this job. Now I’ll have to find something else to pay the bills without interfering with my internship.”

Shikamaru manfully resisted the urge to offer her one of his credit cards along with his heart. Maybe she didn’t know how to drive because she didn’t have a car. He could get her a car.

“I’ll walk you. If that’s okay,” he said instead and shifted his weight from one foot to another when he couldn’t read her reaction.

“Alright,” she finally said with a shrug. “If you want to. Sure.”

She turned and started making her way down the sidewalk at a rapid clip and he lengthened his strides to keep up with her. The air was brisk and refreshing, even if the pace was making his overworked muscles twinge.

“You don’t know how to drive?” he finally asked after some awkward silence.

“Not really, no.”

“I could teach you.” He ignored the voice insisting that he never volunteered for anything, ever.

Mayu gave him a sideways look. “You’re serious.”

“Sure.”

“I’m not...I mean. People have tried to teach me before. It didn’t work out very well.”

“People?”

“Kiba, specifically. He didn’t talk to me for three weeks after.” She somehow made taking a drink of coffee look petulant.

“Really? Three weeks?” Shikamaru asked, captivated by the way the shadows from a nearby tree fell across her face.

“It was a complete overreaction. Fugaku got his car out of impound the next day. There wasn’t even a scratch on it.” She sniffed as she stepped around a pair of tourists who had stopped to take pictures in the middle of the sidewalk.

“It’s called a side _walk,_ not a side-block-everybody-else-with-your-stupid-ass,” she snapped and the two women gasped and glared at her, but she was already moving on.

Shikamaru was still trying to catch up with the comment about the car somehow being impounded as a result of a driving lesson, so he ignored the fact that she was traumatizing random tourists.

“Well, I don’t mind.”

“You don’t mind your car getting impounded?” she asked, sending him an interested look.

Shikamaru shrugged even as he felt his neck flush with embarrassment. “I mean. My dad’s a member of the council, so I’m sure they’d give it back.”

Mayu looked down and let her hair slide forward, but he still caught the edge of her smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Unbidden, a memory hit him. He had asked his father once why he had decided to enter the completely troublesome situation that was matrimony. He had simply shrugged. “Son, when you meet the right person, it’s not a choice you make. It chooses you.”

It had seemed completely nonsensical and Shikamaru had brushed it off as Shikaku being in denial about the misery that love had caused him. Now he thought he might understand exactly what his father had been trying to say.

“You should. Keep it in mind, I mean,” he said, cursing his father for passing on his complete lack of cool with women.

They walked in comfortable silence for a block, Mayu sipping happily on her coffee. She fiddled with the lid and he watched her fingers flutter across the surface, remembering the way they’d felt wrapped around his -

“What will you do? For a partner, I mean,” Mayu said and he pulled his gaze to her face. She was biting her lip and there was a furrow between her brows.

Shikamaru shrugged. “I’ll probably bow out of competing this year, is all.”

It sucked, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

“You couldn’t do singles?”

Shikamaru stepped over a pile of dog poop that somebody had failed to clean up. “Mom is starting to make noises about it. I don’t like it as much, but she says it’s better than nothing. That way I’ll probably be able to keep my sponsors, too.”

“Why don’t you like it as much?” She was looking at him in that way that made him feel important again and he tried not to puff his chest out at the attention.

“Hmm. When there’s somebody out there with me, it feels more real, I think. I’m also overly analytical. It’s not that I don’t have passion - I do. But Temari keeps our stuff fresh - she adds flair and emotion.”

Mayu looked away and he wondered what he’d said that made her so unsure. “You and Temari are pretty close, then?”

Shikamaru blinked, then took a sip of his coffee to hide his smile. A bit of jealousy was probably a good sign. “Sure. We’ve spent the last four years in each other’s pockets. She’s a pain, but she’s like family at this point.”

Mayu’s shoulders relaxed. “So you two never...”

“Nah. I don’t date other skaters, or hook up with them. Too much drama. The press get wind of it and they won’t leave you alone.”

Mayu raised an eyebrow and he blushed. “Well. You were - that’s. I guess you’re an exception.”

It was her turn to blush. “I’m not a skater, really, despite the three voicemails that became progressively more creepy and desperate that your mother left on my phone. So your record is safe.”

Shikamaru stumbled. “My mother did _what?_ How did she get your number?”

Mayu rolled her eyes. “She probably asked one of your dad’s contacts in the government, or called the police station to get it from someone there.”

“Oh,” Shikamaru said, feeling a little stupid for not thinking of that. Then he decided that it probably would have been pretty inappropriate since he had been trying to get her number to ask her out. As opposed to harassing her to take a job.

“So uh. What do you like to do? In your free time.”

Mayu cleared her throat. “Well. I like chemistry? And crime. Um. Sometimes I help Kiba at the kennels.”

“Oh yeah? I help out sometimes, too, in the offseason.”

Mayu tilted her head up at him and smiled as they came to a stop at the streetlight across from the KPD. She hit the walk button and there was a fluttering in his stomach when she stepped close enough to him that their arms brushed.

“Do you like going to the movies?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never actually gone.”

Shikamaru stared at her. “What? How have you never gone?”

Mayu huffed and looked away. “Well, why would I? I have better things to do with my time.”

Shikamaru frowned when she wouldn’t look at him and they started to cross the street. He remembered what Kiba had said about her being alone until he and Tenten came along. Shikamaru had always gone to movies with friends or family, or occasionally on a date.

How had somebody not taken her on a date to the movies, at the very least? She had to have men or women who had been interested in her before. She was amazing.

“Well. Would you like to go with me? Maybe some evening this week?”

Mayu hesitated. “I kind of just lost my job, so I can’t really afford -”

“My treat. Since I asked.”

Mayu’s lips worked as she tried to hold back a smile and they both stepped up on the curb at the same time. “So like. A date?” she said and turned to face him when they stopped in front of the steps of the KPD building.

She rocked up on the balls of her feet, and even with the dark circles under her eyes and her messy hair, he thought she was gorgeous.

“Yes. Exactly like that.”

“I guess I could -” she cut off as her eyes focused on something behind him. “Torii!”

He blinked rapidly when she darted past him and up the steps. What were the chances that she was talking to a different member of the KPD named Torii? He turned and sighed when he caught sight of his perpetually-grumpy second cousin.

He shuffled up the steps after Mayu, annoyed that he’d been thwarted in his quest to win her heart once again.

“Mayu, what are you doing here? Didn’t you cause enough drama on Thursday?” Torii asked.

He was wearing well-tailored slacks with a grey shirt tucked into them that showed off his slim waist, an unbuttoned light wool jacket, and his detective’s badge clipped on his belt. Shikamaru could just make out his gun in its holster underneath the coat. Behind him, a short, bulky man who Shikamaru vaguely recognized as his partner was standing with his arms crossed over his chest.

“If by ‘cause drama,’ you mean ‘catch the culprits’ for the crappy team that was on rotation -”

“Along with taking out a fruit stand that the department is now paying for thanks to you screaming “Freeze! KPD!” right before you sent a dumpster careening into it -”

“In my defense, it also knocked the perp over so that the slow, fat detective could catch him,” Mayu said.

Shikamaru turned a glare on Torii. “You just let civilians chase down criminals, now, cousin?”

Torii raised an eyebrow at Shikamaru. “Well, look who it is. Mom was just complaining about what an ungrateful brat you are, in town for three weeks and not stopping by to see her once.”

“Mom’s keeping me busy.”

“I bet,” Torii said with a chuckle. “What are you doing here, anyway? Here to report another overzealous fan?”

“Nah. I was just walking Mayu,” he said, then pushed his hands into his pockets and sidled closer to her.

She was looking between him and Torii with interest and he noticed she had a bit of coffee on her upper lip. He wondered if he was allowed to kiss her and then remembered what his father had said and pulled his eyes away. Right. He had to prove he was in it for more than just sex.

Torii was now staring at him in outright horror. “Well, shit. I should probably be more surprised than I am. I think you might have outdone your dad this time.”

“What?” Mayu asked, head tilted to the side.

Shikamaru glared at him and then turned to Mayu. “Text me and we’ll set up a time for our date, alright?” he grumbled, not excited about saying it in front of his annoying cousin, but not wanting to leave without making himself clear.

Mayu gave him that shy smile that he was really starting to like, but before she could reply Torii’s partner scoffed.

“Huh, you Nara really do like to stick your dicks into crazy, huh?”

Shikamaru froze as Mayu’s face shut down and she looked down at her feet. He took a deep breath, then spun and took a step towards the man. Torii’s arm across his chest stopped him before he could follow through on his plan to smash his face in.

“Shikamaru, you need to back off,” Torii’s urgent voice said in his ear. “Council member or not, there’s no way your dad can get you off if you punch an on-duty police officer. Come on, man, you know you can’t compete if you’re a felon. Let it go. I’ll take care of it.”

Shikamaru could honestly give a shit about competing or his dad at the moment and Torii’s dickwad of a partner must have seen it because he took a step back. Then a small hand landed on his arm and Mayu’s voice sliced through his anger.

“Shika, hey, it’s okay. Bryant is just a jerk, alright? He’s jealous because I’m amazing and he’s a subpar detective who only got the job because his dad donates so much money to the city -”

Detective Bryant didn’t like that much if the way his face went red was any indication. Shikamaru huffed out a laugh, the urge to make him bleed draining away. Torii’s shoulders slumped in relief when he turned to smile at Mayu.

“You called me Shika,” he said, back to being stupid again.

Mayu blinked. “Well. Your name is kind of a mouthful, you know.”

He smiled and Mayu’s cheeks turned red. In the background, Torii was chewing Bryant out, but Shikamaru was too busy putting a hand on Mayu’s waist and leaning in to kiss her. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t pull back.

“Jesus, Shikamaru, don’t do that here. You want people to give her a harder time than they already do?” Torii said in a long-suffering tone and Shikamaru jerked back as if stung.

“No,” he said, though it was hard to sound convincing when Mayu was sticking her lip out like that.

He looked over at his cousin and was relieved to see that Bryant was stalking back towards the building. Mayu turned to Torii, though she didn’t move away from Shikamaru’s side.

“Hey, is the boss man in?”

“Yeah. But he’s busy trying to clean up _your_ mess with the robbers. Not to mention trying to fill in a few shifts that were unexpectedly dropped by Davidson. After you tore him apart in front of half the Force, he asked for a bunch of mental health days.”

“Well, it’s not _my_ fault he’s more interested in ‘policing’” she held up the hand not holding her coffee cup to do air quotes, “the red light district than he is in responding to calls. And if you ask me, he needs to spend some time in the gym, not at the therapist.”

Shikamaru watched, fascinated, as his usually unflappable cousin’s eye twitched. It was official. His new life goal was to marry Mayu Nomaka.

“Well, I guess since Fugaku is busy, I can just ride around with you today,” she said cheerfully. “Bryant doesn’t have to come, right?”

“He’s my partner, Mayu, I can’t leave him behind,” Torii said with a sigh.

“Wait, you take her out into the field?” Shikamaru asked, scandalized out of daydreaming about her in a bikini on a beach while on their honeymoon.

“No. She just shows up there,” Torii said flatly.

“That’s dangerous, right? Is that dangerous?” He looked over at her and then smiled helplessly when she beamed at him.

“I don’t know, ask the twelve stitches she had to get last year when she got into a fist fight with a perp and he threw her into a pile of trash cans.”

Shikamaru’s smile froze on his face. Mayu and Torii were both watching him closely. This was obviously some sort of test, and he felt like he was in one of those dreams where he had been dropped into the middle of a competition that he hadn’t practiced for.

“That. That’s.” Mayu’s face was doing the thing where it went blank and he panicked. “Well. Did you catch him?” he managed to choke out, but it was worth it when her smile returned.

“Yep! And he had to get _fifteen_ stitches,” she said proudly.

“Wow.” Shikamaru’s voice was faint, but she didn’t seem to notice. So this is why Shikaku always looked constipated when his mother started naming off her long list of ice skating injuries with pride when she drank too much. “That’s. Really something.”

Torii was eyeing him with a modicum of respect and Mayu was bouncing next to him as she went back to pestering Torii about going with him that day.

“Torii,” someone said and Mayu gasped in delight next to him when a reserved man that Shikamaru recognized from the news walked down the steps. Fugaku Uchiha, captain of the elite investigations unit that was famous for solving all the worst crimes around Konoha.

He was wearing a bespoke suit that was pretty standard for an Uchiha. They were an extremely rich, powerful, and stuck-up family within Konoha. Shikamaru realized that he was looking at a face that must never smile, by the lack of laugh lines.

“Fugaku,” Mayu said and Shikamaru put his hands in his pockets and _didn’t_ sulk when she left his side to go bounce around the man.

“Mayu. You caused some trouble on Thursday,” he said sternly.

Her eyes went wide. “I’m really sorry, Fugaku.”

Torii sighed and Shikamaru gaped. He didn’t know that Mayu was capable of that level of honest remorse.

“Yes, well. I suppose it all worked out in the end, despite your dramatics.”  

Shikamaru glared at him, but Mayu brightened. “Oh! Thank you, Captain,” she said and scuffed her foot on the ground. Shikamaru kind of hated Fugaku Uchiha. He’d think of a reason later.

“Torii,” Fugaku said. “We’ve got another one.”

The annoyed expression dropped off of Torii’s face and he looked grim. “Where?”

“Tenth and Auburn. I already sent Bryant around for your car.”

“Oh, another what? It’s that murderer, right?” Mayu asked and Shikamaru was pretty sure murder wasn’t supposed to make people look that ecstatic.

Fugaku turned to her. “No.”

She deflated. “But -”

 _“No,_ Mayu. You’re not coming with us. That’s final. If you’re bored, Doris set aside some filing for you.”

“But,” she said and held up a hand when he walked down the stairs without another word.

Torii gripped her shoulder before following after him at a brusque pace. Shikamaru wanted to punch a second person in the face that day when he took in her hangdog expression. Even if he agreed that she should probably be kept far away from crime scenes. And criminals. Dangerous things in general.

“Well,” he said and she brought her attention back to him. “Did you want to maybe go out for -”

“Shikamaru!” she gasped and he froze.

“Yes?” he said when she just looked at him expectantly.

“You have a _car,”_ she said with reverence.

Ten minutes later, still puffing slightly from the run back to his car, he couldn’t believe he was actually doing this.

“Can’t you go any faster?”

“I’m going ten miles over the speed limit,” he said as patiently as he could.

How was it possible to want to gag somebody and kiss them senseless at the same time? “Shikamaru, if we don’t hurry the forensics team will start cleaning up the blood spatter before I get there!”

“Oh my god,” he said to himself but increased his speed minutely. He didn’t feel like a hero when she cheered and beamed at him. That would be ridiculous.

He turned the corner onto Auburn and raised his eyebrows at the circus in front of a medium-sized white house with a neat lawn. There was an ambulance, multiple cop cars, and at least two vans from local news stations. Right. He’d need to avoid them.

At Mayu’s urging, Shikamaru parked a little way down the street. She was out the door and halfway down the sidewalk before he even opened his door. He had found a black hooded sweatshirt in the back and he traded in his nice green pullover for it before taking a deep breath and opening the driver’s side door.

He pulled his hood up and ducked his head, then slouched over and made his way down the street. He watched with a raised eyebrow as Mayu waited until the uniformed police officers were looking the other way before ducking under the yellow police tape and then striding up the walk like she owned the place.

He gave a small shake of his head when she slipped through the front door. This girl was  _insane._ He shouldn’t think it was charming. He sidled up next to the small crowd of onlookers craning to see what was happening, making sure there were plenty of bodies between him and the reporters.

There was a man sitting on the bumper of the open ambulance, staring into space and shaking. An EMT was checking his vitals and speaking to him in a low tone. A family member, then.

Shikamaru yawned and wondered if Mayu would go to lunch with him once Torii or Fugaku found her and presumably kicked her out. They could even go to a matinee.

He ignored the buzzing of his phone against his thigh that was undoubtedly his mother. She’d probably kill him for disappearing when they should really be spending every moment getting ready for competing in singles, but it was just one day. Plus, Shikamaru hated singles skating.

A commotion pulled his attention to the door, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Detective Bryant dragging a protesting Mayu out of the house by her arm. He edged closer until he was a few feet from them, well away from the crowd, and strained to hear what they were saying.

“-don’t care if you’re Fugaku’s little _pet,_ I’m tired of you coming in and messing with my crime scenes.”

Mayu wrenched her arm from his hold as soon as they stepped off the steps and onto the lawn and turned a glare on him. _“Your_ crime scenes? Please, you couldn’t find a murderer if he was standing over the body with a knife in his hand while wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I love killing people.’”

Bryant stepped forward and loomed over her. Mayu didn’t seem even slightly intimidated, which was the only thing that kept Shikamaru from interfering. He hadn’t known Mayu for that long, but he had already figured out that she wouldn’t appreciate him trying to solve her problems for her.

“You know the only reason the Captain and Torii put up with you is that they feel _sorry_ for the pathetic little orphan girl, right?”

Mayu’s expression barely twitched, but it was enough to give away that he’d scored a hit. Bryant’s grin was sharp. “That’s right. I hear them talking about it sometimes. That letting you think you’re important and smart is the only way to keep you from reverting back to some sort of criminal mastermind -”

“Right,” Mayu said. “So if you don't need me at all, I’m sure you’ve already figured out that the victim isn’t the subject of the killer’s ire?”

Bryant faltered and his brow furrowed. “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”

Mayu sighed explosively. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the other two victims also had ‘adulterer’ written on the wall above them in blood?”

Shikamaru twitched. There went any lingering thoughts that he could get a job at the KPD once he aged out of ice skating. No way was he walking into a scene like that willingly.

Bryant narrowed his eyes but didn’t answer, which was confirmation enough for Mayu. Her expression was self-satisfied as she crossed her arms over her chest and cocked a hip out to the side. “And let me guess - nobody can figure out who they were having an affair with?”

“Right, this conversation is over.” Bryant turned on his heel and Mayu reached out and grabbed his arm.

“It’s because they weren't the cheaters! The killer is punishing the adulterer by killing their significant others.”

Bryant turned a glare at her and she threw her hands up in frustration. “Am I the only one around here who uses her brain? Listen, didn’t you see the cufflinks on the table and the crumpled up credit card bills in the trash? The blanket on the couch? And the remote! Tell me you noticed the remote!”

At Bryant’s blank look she sighed explosively. “God, Torii should just carry a rock around, it’d be more useful as a partner.

“The killer is targeting the spouses of cheaters, then putting their bodies on display for them to find. They’re trying to make them blame their infidelity as the reason their spouse is dead - I’m assuming they’re relying on the illogical nature of human emotions.”

Bryant ripped his arm from her grasp. “You really are crazy. Serial killers want to be around for their victims’ pain - they want to witness it. If the cheaters are their targets, then they would focus on the cheaters.”

“Yes, but that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” she yelled at his back just as Fugaku came around the other end of the house and focused in on her, looking terrifying. Mayu didn’t notice; she was too busy turning and scanning the crowd.

“If they want to witness the vic's pain, that means they’re _here,”_ she said to herself.

Shikamaru was the only one that heard her and he took a step forward, alarmed. If the murderer was there, then...

Mayu’s expression brightened and he followed her gaze. A medium-sized man with curly dark hair was standing with the other bystanders, close to the ambulance.

“You!” Mayu yelled and he startled.

He turned and took in Mayu’s manic expression. Then, he spun on his heel and ran.

Shikamaru somehow already knew that Mayu was going to follow and turned to sprint along the police line in the direction the man had headed. He weaved through the confused people and ignored the shocked face of the reporter that he brushed by.

“Was that -” he heard her say, but then he dashed around the news van and lost track of her words. He swore under his breath when he saw Mayu disappear between two houses, her light blue jacket fluttering out behind her.

He pushed more speed into his legs, his earlier soreness forgotten. He could hear the pounding of footsteps behind him and Fugaku issuing orders but ignored that in favor of straining to catch up with Mayu. Who was chasing down a serial killer. Why in the world had his usually apathetic heart set its sights on her?

He leapt over a hedge and skidded around the corner he’d seen Mayu disappear behind. It was a long strip of green lawn between two almost-identical houses and he crossed the distance in a few seconds. He emerged into a small alley that separated the houses that faced the other side of the block from the ones behind him, slowing long enough to spot Mayu sprinting all out after the curly-haired man.

She was closing the distance fairly quickly, and Shikamaru was vaguely impressed with her speed even as his long strides started eating up the distance between them.

“To the right!” He called back to the police officers who were just entering the space between houses. He’d prefer that they caught up to Mayu sooner rather than later.

He was coming up on Mayu, but not as quickly as she was catching up with the man, who seemed to be tiring. No surprise there - maintaining a sprint was difficult if you didn’t run regularly. Shikamaru was a professional athlete, so he could sustain this pace for a while longer. He assumed Mayu did some sort of training, as well, if she was able to sustain her run.

They rounded the corner at the end of the alley and Mayu was only a few feet behind the man. Shikamaru was only five seconds from catching up, but he turned the corner just in time to see Mayu leap and tackle him to the ground.

He winced when they hit the sidewalk in a tangle of limbs, though Mayu’s fall seemed more controlled. She rolled a few times before coming to her feet. The curly haired man scrambled to his just as Shikamaru skidded to a stop on his other side.

Up close, he could see that he was older - probably in his early forties. He was average-looking, with a little paunch visible through his open jacket. He was breathing harshly and the right side of his face was scraped up, presumably from where it had met pavement.

“Everybody freeze! KPD!” Shikamaru’s shoulders relaxed and he stepped to the side to give them a clear view of the perp.

“Hey, Fugaku!” Mayu was smiling a little manically and bouncing up on the balls of her feet. “Look! I found the killer.”

“We’ll discuss your blatant breaking of the law later,” Fugaku said and Shikamaru shuddered at how terrifying he’d managed to make his tone sound. Mayu’s shoulders had slumped, but she didn’t look overly concerned.

“But -”

“Enough. Sir, put your hands over your head where I can see them.”

“This is preposterous,” the man warbled as he raised his shaky hands over his head and Shikamaru narrowed his eyes at his shifty-eyed look. “I was simply out for a stroll and this - this _crazy person_ attacked me for no reason! Of course, I ran.”

“You’ve really done it this time, Nomaka,” a smug-sounding Bryant said and Shikamaru resisted the urge to turn and glare at him.

He had a bad feeling about this - the man didn’t look like he was altogether sane. His eyes were darting around and he kept twitching towards Mayu. Shikamaru began edging his way around him, intent on getting closer to her.

“Ugh, Bryant, you’re such a -”

“Enough,” Fugaku snapped. They both stopped talking, though Mayu was still looking at where Shikamaru assumed Fugaku was standing.

“Alright,” Fugaku said. “I’m going to -”

Shikamaru had only taken a few steps when the curly-haired man burst into motion.

“No!” he said as the man jumped forward and grabbed Mayu, who was still focused on Fugaku with sad, hopeful eyes.

Shikamaru took a few rapid steps forward but stopped when he caught the glint of sun on the knife as the man had pulled it from his coat pocket and put it to Mayu’s throat. His other arm was wrapped around her middle and he was breathing harshly into her ear.

Mayu, for her part, looked a mix of annoyed and bored. “Ugh, really? This is your big plan? How dull.”

Shikamaru was going to kill her. His hands were shaking and his gaze was riveted on the knife, though he was aware that Fugaku had moved up to stand next to him.

“You don’t want to do this,” Fugaku said.

Shikamaru glanced at him and had to breathe through his panic. Fugaku’s face was calm, but he could see the tension around his eyes and in his shoulders. He was afraid for Mayu, and with good reason. Curly-haired guy looked unhinged. Sweat was pouring down his face and the hand holding the knife was shaking so hard that it nicked the skin on Mayu’s neck.

She winced. “Do you _mind?”_

Shikamaru caught movement behind the man, and had to force himself not to react when Torii crept out from behind a garbage can, gun held out in front of him and trained on the man’s back. His face was cold and Shikamaru knew he was ready to kill him.

Shikamaru stared at the small dribble of blood on Mayu’s neck and thought _Good, I hope he does,_ with surprising viciousness.

“You - you ruined everything!” the man screamed and Mayu rolled her eyes.

“Please. You’re the one that was hanging out at the scene of your crime. You weren’t even _trying_ to hide your erection, you know. Dead giveaway. Even Bryant would have realized something was wrong if he wasn’t too lazy to look around him every once in a while.”

Bryant didn’t rise to the bait, though Shikamaru was sure he was glaring at her from where he was standing behind Shikamaru and to his right. He could barely make out the gun he had trained on the man in his peripheral vision.

“Mayu, that’s enough,” Fugaku snapped and she stuck her lip out.

“Alright. We’re going to put down our guns,” Fugaku said, raising it in the air and then slowly crouching. The man’s eyes followed it avidly. Shikamaru could hear the rustle of Bryant’s clothing from his other side as he followed suit.

Mayu was tapping her foot in what looked like impatience. Was she really that unaffected? Fugaku straightened once his gun was on the ground, eyes never leaving the man.

“Good,” The man said and gave a nervous giggle. “I - I’m going to take the girl with me. You’re going to let us go or I’ll slit her throat.”

“Alright,” Fugaku said, keeping his voice level and calm.

Shikamaru twitched and shot him an incredulous look. He wasn’t actually going to let that madman take Mayu, was he? His pulse was pounding in his ears and he was going lightheaded and it had nothing to do with his sprint through the neighborhood.

“Alright,” the man said to himself, eyes darting from left to right. “Alright.”

He took a step back and tugged on Mayu’s arm. She stumbled and the hand holding the knife flailed as she knocked him slightly off balance. Mayu reached up and grabbed his wrist with both hands. She ducked and twisted under him, then did something complicated with her grip that had him gasping and dropping the knife.

His eyes went wide and he made a small _oofing_ noise when she continued her spin and slammed an elbow into his lower back, then kicked the back of his knee. He went down to one knee and she danced back out of the way while Torii and Fugaku descended on him.

They had him facedown on the ground and were reading him his Miranda Rights while Bryant holstered his gun and patted him down. Shikamaru barely noticed in his rush to get to Mayu.

She squeaked when he pulled her into a hug and buried his face in her hair. He was still having trouble pulling in enough oxygen, but the lightheaded feeling he’d had when she was in danger was fading.

“You stupid girl,” he said and pushed her back by her shoulders to peer closely at the cut on her neck. It was shallow, but he’d still have the EMT look at it. It would definitely need to be disinfected; who knew what that man had been doing with it.

She slapped his hand away lightly when he reached out to wipe the blood away. “I’m fine,” she said slowly, brows furrowed and head cocked to the side as she studied him. He cupped the side of her neck that wasn’t injured, and her eyes widened.

“You were worried?”

“Of course I was worried,” he said and was annoyed when the quiver in his voice gave away just how shaken he was.

“Oh.” She blinked, then looked away. “Well, I’m, uh...sorry?”

She looked back at him, looking so uncomfortable that he snorted. “Not good at apologizing, hm?”

Mayu’s resulting smile was hesitant and she leaned up and pressed her lips to his. It was quick, barely there, but it made the pressure in his chest relax enough that he could breathe properly again.

“Well, that’s a good start,” he said after an embarrassingly long moment of staring at her.

She gave him a cheeky grin that had him putting an arm around her waist and reeling her in closer. “Are you hurt anywhere else? When you tackled him -”

“No, I’m okay.” She was staring at a spot on his chest and fiddling with one of the strings of his hoodie and he thought that she might not be used to people worrying about her. Well, that was certainly something he could provide for her in the future.

“Mayu Nomaka,” Fugaku’s voice said from behind them and she squeaked and jumped back from Shikamaru, then turned to face Fugaku. Torii was standing behind him and to his right, and his blank expression told Shikamaru exactly how much shit they were in.

Fugaku’s jaw was actually ticking from the pressure he was putting on it and everything about him screamed ‘extremely pissed off’ despite how solemn he remained. Mayu must have caught on to that, too, because she started wringing her hands.

“Fugaku! I didn’t mean to go off by myself. I tried to tell Bryant but he -”

“Enough,” he said in a low voice that had Shikamaru sidling closer to her. Mayu’s mouth snapped shut, but her face had gone pale.  

“You realize I could charge you? You broke into my crime scene. That’s considered obstruction of justice.”

Mayu looked down at her feet and nodded once, expression miserable. Fugaku seemed unmoved. “Until you’ve passed the Police Academy, I don’t want to see you within a block of my station or any of my crime scenes.”

Mayu’s head snapped up and she opened her mouth, probably to argue.

“Mayu, I swear on my badge, I will book you if you do. That includes harassing Torii or my officers, do you understand me?”

Her eyes were swimming with tears. “You don’t - you don’t want me around anymore?”

“You are a menace and an annoyance and are constantly getting yourself into trouble that I am forced to pull you out of. It is a waste of my time. I don’t want to see your face again until you’re a trained officer.”

Shikamaru’s fist clenched at his side at the way she hunched in on herself and even Torii was staring at Fugaku with narrowed eyes. “She _caught_ that guy for you,” Shikamaru said.

Fugaku gave him a dismissive look. “Shikamaru Nara? I’ll be having a conversation with your father about his son’s new hobby.”

“Fine. I’ll be having a conversation of my own with my father,” he said and was surprised by how cold his tone had gone.

Fugaku raised a brow, unperturbed. His eyes flicked to Mayu, who was visibly struggling not to cry, and Shikamaru saw what might have been regret flit across his features before he spun on his heel and walked away, barking out orders to the officers who were now on the scene and struggling to push the reporters back.

Torii hesitated and Shikamaru glared at him as he put an arm around Mayu’s shoulders. “Your boss and partner are dicks. If Bryant had listened to Mayu in the first place, she wouldn’t have _had_ to chase down the guy on her own.”

Torii ignored him in favor of stepping in front of Mayu. “Mayu...he didn’t mean it, alright? He’s just not used to being scared, and you scared him.”

Mayu shrugged. “It - it’s okay Torii. People...they just don’t like me much. He lasted a lot longer than just about anybody else.”

Shikamaru felt like he’d been punched in the gut when she shook his arm off her and turned to walk down the street at a rapid pace. Torii ran a hand down his face and muttered something to himself about emotionally stunted people.

“What did you mean, about Bryant not listening to her?” Torii asked.

“You know what? I’m done with this,” Shikamaru snapped. “Ask him yourself. Then, if I were you, I’d request a new partner.”

He then turned and jogged to catch up with Mayu. They spent an hour and a half giving their statements to a calm officer named Dai that Mayu seemed fairly friendly with. She hadn’t argued with Shikamaru when he led her to his car after the EMT looked her over, reciting her address in a lifeless tone.

She was silent as he drove her back into the city. He kept glancing over at her, but every time he opened his mouth to say something, he’d hesitate and close it again. She was curled up in her seat, leaning against the door and resting her forehead on the window.

It was a poignant counterpoint to the energetic, caustic woman he’d been getting to know, and it made him want to find Fugaku and yell at him some more. Instead, after some hesitation, he reached across the console and put his hand over hers. She lifted her head and turned to study him, but he kept his eyes on the road.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” she finally said. “Are you still hoping to get me to skate with you?”

Shikamaru took a deep breath to calm his irritation at her accusing tone. She hadn’t moved her hand from under his and he had a feeling that was a good sign.

“I’m being nice to you because I like you,” he said simply.

“But you heard Fugaku. I - I’m an annoyance. I screw up everything.” Her voice was thick with emotion and he turned on his blinker and pulled into the mostly-empty parking lot of a shopping mall.

“What are you doing? Do you need to get something?”

He turned in his seat after parking and cupped her cheek in his hand. Her eyes widened and she stilled.

“Mayu. You’re not an annoyance. You’re brilliant, alright? Fugaku is just an asshole.”

She blinked rapidly and looked down at where his other hand was still covering her own. “That’s not - don’t say that. Fugaku saved me. If it weren’t for him...”

Shikamaru tilted her head towards him so he could see her face properly. “What do you mean?”

Mayu chewed on her lower lip, her eyes darting over his face. “When I was fourteen, I got tired of the system and ran away from the foster home I was in.”

Shikamaru made an encouraging noise, even as the image of a younger Mayu as a runaway made him feel like his insides had started dissolving. She shrugged and turned in her seat to look straight ahead and he let her, dropping the hand that had been on her cheek to his lap. He sensed that she needed some distance to get through this.

“It wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking. I wasn’t without skills, and I’m clever. I started making money doing odd jobs. Um, hacking, mostly. I was living in an old condemned house, but I had managed to get electricity and water hooked up. I, uh, made it seem like it was going to the neighbors to the power and water companies,” she admitted with a little shrug.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. That was more than a little impressive for a fourteen-year-old. She glanced over and smiled humorlessly at his expression.

“Anyway. I built a reputation. If somebody needed something to disappear from their records, or they needed somebody to hack into a rival company’s files...well. They came to me.”

Shikamaru did his best not to react to the fact that she was casually talking about how she used to be a criminal. Or that he wasn’t even that bothered by it, other than the idea of a tiny Mayu hanging around a bunch of low-lives making him twitch.

“I’m guessing something happened,” he finally said and she nodded.

“One day a senator asked me to locate and delete some compromising photos of his son with a prostitute. He, uh, was into some pretty crazy stuff. Anyway, the son came along to the final meeting. His name was Jonathan Wagner.”

Shikamaru twitched. “What, as in son of Bill Wagner?”

Mayu hummed and almost absently turned her hand around to weave their fingers together. Jonathan Wagner had been in jail for the past four years for the attempted murder of a young girl, among other various charges. Fugaku’s team had been the one to save the girl and arrest him. He breathed deeply to calm himself as he started to form a picture of where this story was going.

“He, uh...asked me out. Jonathan, I mean. Which, you know, was pretty gross, considering I was obviously very young. I was fifteen at the time. Almost sixteen. He was twenty-one.”

Shikamaru looked over at her, breath catching, but she had turned her head and was watching a woman push a cart to her car. “Hm. She’s supposed to be at work, but recently lost her job and is hiding it from her wife,” she said distractedly.

“Really? How do you know?”

Mayu turned away from the woman. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I turned him down, obviously. He wasn’t...well. He didn’t like that. I was a little less circumspect then, so I wasn't exactly, uh, gentle. I also revealed that he’d been stealing from his father’s campaign funds, because he annoyed me.”

“Bet he _really_ didn’t like that,” Shikamaru said and she smirked.

“No. After that he, uh. He started following me around. Hired a PI to figure out where I lived.”

“He was stalking you,” Shikamaru said, tone flat, and Mayu nodded.

“Yeah. It was - it was bad. Back then, I didn’t really know how to defend myself, physically. So I did a lot of running and hiding. Eventually, I decided that even living in the system for a few years was better than letting him just...rule my life, so I went to the police.”

Shikamaru watched as her face screwed up into an expression of disgust. “Nobody would listen to me. He was the son of a senator. I was just some runaway.”

Shikamaru breathed in deeply through his nose. Yeah, he’d be talking to his father about this. When he looked back over, Mayu was watching him with a small smile on her face.

“What?”

“Nothing. You just look like you’re ready to go beat somebody up for me. It’s kinda cute.”

“Yeah, well,” he grumbled, annoyed when his cheeks heated and her smile grew.

“You followed me today, even though you knew I was chasing a serial killer. You’re pretty brave.”

Shikamaru was horrified when his blush grew more intense, but when she leaned in and kissed him once, softly, he felt a little better about himself. When she pulled back, her smile had faded.

“I wish I knew you back then,” she said softly. “Things wouldn’t have been so horrible.”

He tightened his grip on her hand, aware that she was about to say something that he wasn’t going to like. She was back to staring out the windshield.

“Anyway. I guess Fugaku somehow ended up seeing the report that I filled out. He told me later that he’d been investigating Wagner for other things, as well. Embezzlement, a dead prostitute...” she cleared her throat. “I didn’t know this, obviously, but he’d started following him on his own time after that, hoping to protect me I think.”

Mayu bit her lip. “He - he broke into my house.”

Shikamaru tightened his hand around hers but didn’t otherwise react. He felt a lot like he had when he’d seen the man holding a knife to her throat earlier that day. He just wanted to wrap her up in a soft blanket and keep her next to him forever.

Mayu took a deep breath. “He was mad that I’d gone to the police, since somebody at the station had called his father about it. I tried to fight back, but it was pretty pathetic,” she said with a moue of distaste. “I think he would have killed me if Fugaku hadn’t been right behind him. He - he was so cool,” she breathed and her eyes had gone from dull to shiny with admiration.

Shikamaru sighed and stopped resisting the urge to tug her into a hug. She huffed out a breath in surprise but didn’t try to pull away, instead melting against him.

“Fugaku was able to build enough of a case against him to send him to prison. And after that...he didn’t just leave like anybody else would have. He found me a decent halfway house to stay in until I could get emancipated,” she said against Shikamaru’s shoulder as she went back to playing with the ties of his sweatshirt.

“He knew the person who ran it personally, so it wasn't so bad. He’s also the one that convinced me to go to the classes Tenten taught. And...he convinced me to go back to school.”

Shikamaru tightened his arms around her at the way her voice caught. “I hated it, you know. I was angry with everybody all the time, mostly because people, for the most part, are idiots. I just didn’t see the point in it all. It was so _dull._ He used to let me see one cold case file a month if I kept my grades up and didn’t skip class. I know - I know you think he’s a jerk but if it weren’t for him...”

She drifted off, and he shrugged. “You love him.”

He didn’t mean romantically, of course, and Mayu seemed to understand what he was getting at because she only sniffled. “Yeah,” she said in a subdued tone. “I suppose I do.”

“That doesn’t give him the right to hurt you.”

“He’s just saying what everybody thinks,” Mayu said before pulling away from him.

He sighed at the closed-off expression on her face and didn’t try to pull her back in, despite how wet her eyes looked. “It’s not what I think. It’s not what Kiba or Tenten think. I bet your friend Hinata doesn’t feel that way, either.”

Mayu looked down and shrugged but didn’t respond. He studied her and decided he shouldn’t push. Instead, he turned on his car and ignored the phone that was vibrating in his pocket. He wasn’t up to talking to his mom at the moment. Mayu lived in a neighborhood that had been a high-crime area a few years ago but was now overrun by cupcake shops and men with well-groomed beards on bikes.

“My parking spot is number three,” she supplied when he pulled up around back.

He put the car into park after locating the spot and looked over at her. She was fidgeting and staring down at her hands. Her face was too pale and the bags under her eyes were more pronounced than they had been earlier that day. He wondered when she’d last slept. The bandage that the EMT had put over the cut on her neck just completed the pitiful picture she made.

Shikamaru didn’t want to leave her after what happened, but he didn’t want to push her, either. She’d barely spoken to him the rest of the ride. He had a feeling she didn’t talk much about her past and that doing so had made her supremely uncomfortable. He took a breath to say goodbye, but she spoke first.

“Do you want to come up and meet Beaker?”

Shikamaru was stuck between confusion as to why she wanted to introduce him to lab equipment and joy that she didn’t want to separate yet, either. “Beaker?”

“Um, my cat. He’s nice, not one of those cats that scratch or anything. He mostly just sleeps, honestly.”

Shikamaru smiled. “Sure. I could. I mean. Yeah, alright.”

She smiled at his awkwardness but didn’t comment as she clambered out of the small SUV. He hurried to get out and pull her backpack from the backseat before she could get to it. She raised her eyebrows at him from where she’d opened the door on the other side but didn’t protest.

He followed her inside the building, which was old but looked like it been remodeled recently. “This is nice,” he said.

“Oh. Well, I’ve lived here since I turned seventeen - over three years, now. It was really cheap back then, and it’s still in a rent-stabilized zone, so.”

Shikamaru wasn’t sure how many more mini-heart attacks he could take that day. Three years ago this whole neighborhood had been a crime-ridden dump. He once again forced himself not to offer her something ridiculous like his car or a new house. That they’d live in together, preferably.

It was official, Shikamaru Nara had lost his mind. The worst (best?) part was, he didn’t think he cared.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ice skating happens, cuddling happens, and Fugaku and Torii show up with News. Also, Beaker the cat gets a cameo.

They walked up two flights of stairs, and Shikamaru’s abused muscles protested the whole way, though he tried his best not to show it. Mayu didn’t need to know that his mother was his own personal bully.

“My apartment is one of the few that hasn’t been remodeled since they’re trying to encourage me to move out so that they can charge as much for the apartment as they do for the rest. So, you know, don’t expect much,” Mayu said and he thought she sounded a little nervous, which was pretty cute.

They stopped in front of a door that was painted a depressing green and sported three deadbolts. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at the other entries, which were a respectable white and had numbers proclaiming which apartments they were. Hers only had a sad little ‘2’ followed by two squares of lighter-colored paint where, presumably, the other plaques used to reside.

She unlocked all three deadbolts before swinging the door open. Shikamaru followed her inside, then stopped to gape at the scene. Her apartment was a small studio with a full-sized bed on the far side that was sitting on a raised platform. Above it was a pair of dirty windows with a sleeping cat lying on the sill, bathing in the filtered sunlight.

There was a small, worn couch in the living area which was piled high with various books and papers, and a coffee table in front of it that was similarly outfitted. A tiny kitchen table with two mismatched chairs on either side was up against the wall across from the couch. A chemistry set covered its surface, complete with stoppered beakers full of oddly-colored liquids, a scale, and a microscope.

The kitchen was also quite small, with minimal counter space, three cupboards, and ancient-looking appliances. All available surfaces had bins and pyrex stacked on them and he assumed she didn't do a lot of cooking in there. Shikamaru set her backpack by the door and wandered into the kitchen as Mayu started fussing over whatever was on the table while muttering about growth rates.

Each container was neatly labeled and he frowned as he leaned closer. Did that say...he pulled away and backed quickly out of the kitchen. Okay, so her kitchen was an extension of her table-lab. That was good to know. They’d need an outbuilding of some sort if they ever lived together where she could do her...whatever it was she was doing.

She was still messing with a beaker full of murky brown liquid at the table, so he wandered over to the cat. That was, after all, why he was there.

He was medium-sized and had soft-looking brown and white fur. Shikamaru stepped up on the wooden platform that the bed sat on, not bothering to use the two rickety-looking steps, then reached over and ran his hand down the cat’s side.

It didn’t bother lifting its head, though it did make a content sound and turn over on its back to expose its belly. Shikamaru raised an eyebrow but obediently gave it light belly scratches.

“I told you. He’s lazy,” Mayu said fondly from next to him and Shikamaru jerked in surprise before looking over at her. Her hand joined his own and he cleared his throat when their fingers brushed.

“It - it’s pretty weird, right?”

“What’s that?” His voice was lower than usual, but standing right next to her at the end of her bed had memories from the night at the bar playing through his head.

“My house. I mean, Kiba always teases me about all the,” she flapped her hand to encompass the books and weird substances and chemistry set.

Shikamaru shrugged. “It’s pretty cute, actually. Terrifying, but cute.”

Mayu turned wide eyes on him. “Really?”

Shikamaru smiled at her. “Really.”

He let out an oof of air when she grabbed the front of his sweater and spun him around before pushing. The back of his knees hit the bed, and his back had barely touched the duvet that was crumpled up on top of the mattress before she was crawling up his body and latching her lips onto his own.

His mind went pleasantly blank when her tongue snaked into his mouth and ran along his own. One hand went to her hip and the other twisted into her hair. She made a low sound of approval in the back of her throat, and they began kissing in earnest.

Shikamaru’s hand drifted up and under her knit shirt, trailing lightly across the skin there. In response, Mayu sat up and he made a sad sound at the loss of her body against his. Then she grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled it over her head and he stopped breathing at the sight of her soft skin and purple bra.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said and reached out to run his hands up her sides, causing her to shiver in response. Goosebumps broke out across her skin and he did it again, enjoying the reactions he was pulling from her.

His gaze traveled up her body. He paused and frowned when he saw a wicked-looking scar on one shoulder. It resembled what he’d expect a stab wound to look like. His eyes went to her face, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. She was concentrating on pushing his shirt and sweater up to get to the skin underneath.

She looked frantic and not in a good way. Her skin was still overly pale and the area around her eyes looked almost bruised, the bags under them were so pronounced. She still had a bandage on her neck and he was broken from his stupor when he remembered that she wasn’t really in a good place at the moment.

“Mayu,” he rasped, but she ignored him and made a triumphant sound when she got his pants unbuttoned. He reached down and stilled her fumbling fingers with his own hands.

“Mayu,” he said again and she blinked up at him.

“Oh,” she said after a second and her face did that thing he hated where it went all blank and empty. “You don’t want to.”

“I do,” he hurried to say when her shoulders hunched up. “I just...I want...”

She reached for her shirt where it had landed next to him and put it on with jerky motions when he fumbled with his words.

“It’s okay.” She swung her leg over him and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “I understand. You don’t need to explain. You can go, I’m sorry that I - I misunderstood.”

Her back was bowed and she was staring down at her feet. She looked small like that and Shikamaru took a deep breath, then sat up and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Sweetheart,” he said and she jerked in surprise.

He grimaced and hoped she didn't mind the pet name - it had just slipped out. Still, he continued on, not wanting her to believe for a second more that he was rejecting her.

“I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand. I do want this, but it doesn’t feel like the right time. I just...don’t want to screw this up. I’ll leave if you want me to, but...I’d like to stay.”

Mayu turned and tilted her head to the side while she studied him. It was pretty charming and he couldn’t resist reaching out to cup her cheek in one hand. Her lips turned up into a wobbly smile and he returned it.

“So you...don’t want to have sex?”

“Oh, I do. I’d just rather do it for the first time with you when we aren’t both exhausted and traumatized.”

“I’m not traumatized,” she grumped and he chuckled.

“Okay, but _I_ am. So, what do you say? Can I hang out here for awhile? If you send me away, I’ll be forced to go home where my mother will most certainly be waiting.”

As if on cue, his phone started buzzing in his pocket and he groaned and flopped back on the bed. “She’s going to kill me,” he said mournfully and Mayu giggled.

“Why? Aren’t you, like, twenty-two?”

“Yeah, but she’s not just my mother; she’s my coach and I missed practice today.”

“Oh,” Mayu said and he glanced over when she tentatively moved to lay next to him and put her head on his shoulder. “You missed practice to be with me?”

Shikamaru shrugged, trying to ignore the way his lips were attempting to pull up into a dorky grin. “Worth it.” She turned her face into his shoulder, presumably to hide her smile.

“I don’t have a TV,” she said. “I have a laptop we could watch movies on...”

He hummed and thought about how exhausted she looked. “At the risk of sounding like a loser, can we take a nap? I’m not used to getting up so early.” It wasn’t a lie, after all.

“I...okay. Um. I think I have a pair of Kiba’s sweats here that he brought me last time he picked me up from the ER. I washed them. Do you want to wear them?”

“Alright.” He sat up and tried not to pout when she wiggled out of bed and went to the dresser he hadn't noticed in the corner.

He watched as she rifled through the drawers and pulled out a pair of sweats and a few other items that looked like her pajamas. He accepted the sweats from her and admired how appealing she looked when she was nervous.

“I’m going to go take a shower, then I’ll. Um. I’ll be out?”

“Alright,” he agreed and couldn’t resist cupping her cheek and leaning forward to kiss her. She pushed against him and returned it eagerly, and by the time he pulled back they were both panting.

“Sorry. You’re difficult to resist,” he said and she ducked her head.

“Well. I’m going to -” She motioned towards the bathroom.

“Alright,” he agreed and watched her until the door closed behind her.

He quickly changed into the sweats, relieved that he wouldn’t have to sleep in his tight jeans. After a few seconds of hesitation, he decided to keep his t-shirt on. He wasted a few minutes making her bed, ignoring Beaker’s seemingly-judgemental green eyes - he’d woken up at some point - before crawling into it.

It was surprisingly comfortable. He was quite tired, even if he’d requested the nap for her benefit. Shikamaru listened to the sounds of the shower for a while before giving in to the inevitable and looking at his phone. He groaned. Five missed calls from his mother and multiple texts from her as well that were bordering on homicidal towards the end.

One from his father, which simply read: _Call your mother._ Shikamaru was so screwed.

One from Kiba that said: _Dude ur on the news chasing down a serial killer with Mayu. Congratulations, ur officially whipped._

Shikamaru was _dead._ He decided to enjoy his last few moments on earth with Mayu and sent off a text to his dad. _Tell mom I’m fine and I’ll call her later._ Yep, she was going to kill him. He shut off his phone and set it on the bedside table just as the bathroom door opened.

Mayu looked a little better; cheeks flushed from the heat of the water and hair pulled back into a braid. She’d exchanged her bandage for a large band-aid and was wearing a pair of green flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt with the words _Second Chance Kennels_ printed on the front. Shikamaru had a matching one at his house from all the times he’d volunteered there with Kiba.

Mayu padded across the room and hesitated at the steps to the platform. She shifted from one foot to the other and bit her lip. Shikamaru pushed himself up on an elbow.

“I can move to the couch,” he offered, then eyed the too-small piece of furniture with its mountain of books and papers doubtfully.

“No! Um. I mean, it’s fine. I’ve just...never slept in a bed with someone other than Hinata,” she admitted and looked down at her feet.

Shikamaru tilted his head to the side. He’d figured out she was about twenty, from the conversation about her apartment. It wasn’t that surprising that she hadn’t shared a bed with someone. He was reasonably sure she wasn’t a virgin, though, and he remembered what Kiba had said in the bar about people getting the wrong idea about her.

Resisting the urge to ask her the names and addresses of all her exes, he just held a hand out towards her. Mayu bit her lip, then walked up the steps and crawled up the bed. He pulled the covers aside and when she slipped her hand into his, he gently tugged until she slid between the sheets and settled at his side.

After a moment where she lay stiffly beside him, she shifted closer, eyes darting up so she could observe his reaction. He kept his expression open and encouraging and resisted the urge to sigh in relief when she put her head on his shoulder and tentatively rested a hand on his chest.

Shikamaru tugged the blankets back across them and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He then reached over with his other hand and placed it over the one lying on his chest. He raised an eyebrow when Beaker stood from where he’d been sitting on the sill, watching the proceedings closely, and hopped onto the bed. He curled up on Shikamaru’s stomach and proceeded to purr loudly.

They both stared at the cat for awhile and finally, Mayu spoke. “You actually like me.” When he looked over she was staring up at him with a look of disbelief.

“I do,” Shikamaru said easily.

Mayu hesitated, then shrugged and tilted her head down so that she wasn’t looking at his face anymore. “I like you too.”

The warmth that sent through him was worth every moment of the lecturing and drills he knew he’d be running as soon as he got home. “I’m glad,” he said softly.

It only took a few minutes for them to fall asleep. Shikamaru had a strange dream where he could control shadows and Mayu had two pet spiders that she was manipulating with twitches of her fingers. They were fighting large red clouds that were descending upon them from a dark blue sky.

When he opened his eyes, Mayu was there. She was sitting cross-legged next to him on the bed, fingers of one hand flying across the keyboard of the laptop on the bed in front of her. The other was playing absently with his hair and she was humming a Taylor Swift song off-tune.

She’d taken her hair out of the braid and it was falling in waves around her face. She looked better and Shikamaru watched, lips turning up into what he was sure was a soft, dopey smile, as her brow furrowed and she started muttering to herself. He was warm and content and her fingers moving through his hair was making him want to curl up and go back to sleep.

Beaker was a comforting weight at his feet and he realized that waking up any other way now seemed empty and grey. She glanced over at him and her whole face lit up when she saw his eyes were open.

“Oh good! You’re awake.” She closed the lid of her laptop and turned to face him. “We have so much to discuss.”

“We do?” He sat up and leaned forward and her eyes widened, but she didn’t pull back when he kissed her. 

Aware that his breath was probably pretty horrendous, he kept his mouth closed. When he pulled back, though, Mayu still looked slightly dazed and he knew his smile reflected how self-satisfied he felt about the effect he had on her.

Mayu’s lips twitched and she looked away before clearing her throat. He glanced out the window - it was fully dark outside. “What time is it?” His voice was raspy with sleep and he cleared his throat.

“Oh. Um. It’s around eight.”

“No wonder I’m hungry.” He lifted his arms above him in a stretch. “We slept for hours.”

“Yeah. I, um. I’ve only been up for about an hour. I put out a towel. If you wanted to shower? Or, I mean, you probably have to leave -”

“A shower would be good,” he said easily. “Then I’ll order in some food. What’s good around here?”

He felt her eyes on him as he climbed out of bed. He stopped to pet Beaker, who tipped his head back and made happy cat noises. “There’s a good Thai place around the corner,” she said.

He grabbed his phone and turned it on and was surprised when he only had two additional missed calls from his mother. Huh, he hadn’t actually thought that text to his father would work. He found the Thai restaurant on a delivery app and ordered a large amount of food that his mother would kill him for eating later.

Mayu’s bathroom was tiny and only sported a shower stall, a sink with rust stains, and a toilet. The linoleum was yellowed with age and there was a window that was cracked open, presumably to let out steam. Despite the appliances being older than Shikamaru, it was as clean as it could get.

The water was warm, too, and the pressure was good. He used Mayu's soaps, resigning himself to smelling like lavender. When he was done he wrapped the towel she had set out around his waist.

A knock on the door signaled that Mayu was standing on the other side. “There’s extra toothbrushes under the sink. If you’re, um. If you need it.”

“Thanks.” He knelt down and opened the cupboard. He blinked down at the basket of toothbrushes. There had to be at least two dozen there, still in their packaging. “That is a lot of toothbrushes,” he called out.

“Well, they’re useful,” she said defensively through the door and he chuckled before grabbing a blue one and closing the cupboard.

He found a tube of toothpaste behind the mirror and brushed his teeth. He then pulled the sweats and his t-shirt back on just as a knock sounded on the front door. When he stepped out of the bathroom, he almost tripped over Beaker, who was sitting right outside the entrance.

“Shit, sorry,” he said when the cat walked off in a huff.

He looked up and winced at the disbelieving look Mayu was giving him as she held up three large bags of Thai food. “I was hungry,” he grumbled. Also, he was pretty sure he had felt her ribs through her shirt and it made him want to stuff her full of food.

They ended up clearing off the couch and eating straight from the containers. Mayu kept glancing over at him, but she didn’t say anything. They only got through about a third of the food before Shikamaru collapsed back and groaned.

“Mom is going to make me run so much tomorrow.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure grown men aren’t supposed to let their mothers rule their lives.” 

“Well, they don’t have _my_ mom. And I told you, she’s my coach, too, which means she kind of does get to run my life.” Shikamaru had stopped responding to ribbing about his mother’s role in his life years ago.

“Well. She won’t. Punish you, I mean.” He looked over and raised his eyebrows at the way she was fiddling with her chopsticks and biting her lip.

“Oh? You going to protect me?”

“I mean, kinda? I...may have negotiated a pass for you on this whole day.”

Shikamaru sat up, alarmed. “You talked to my mom?”

Mayu tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and kept her gaze firmly on her food. “Well, yeah. I kind of have to. She’s my coach now, after all.”

Shikamaru gaped at her as he tried to wrap his mind around what she was saying. “Do you mean -”

“Yeah. You and I are officially partners. I mean, if you still want that. It’s just, I’m not doing my internship anymore,” she cleared her throat and blinked rapidly, “and I got fired, too. The stipend that the sponsors provide is more than I could make at any summer job, so. Also...I want. I want, um.”

He stared at her as she tapped her fingers on her knee in nerves. “You want to...” he prompted and she took a deep breath and looked over at him.

“I want to help you.” She shrugged. “You’ve been so nice to me. And I like you, I guess.”

Shikamaru reached forward and gently took the container of garlic chicken from her and set it on one of the piles of books at their feet. She glanced over and inhaled as he pulled her against him and kissed her. Mayu’s hand fisted in his shirt and her mouth opened under his.

She tasted like garlic and sweet sauce and she was soft and pliant in his arms. She didn’t resist when he pushed gently until she was laying on the couch with him laying over her. He pulled back and peppered her face and neck with kisses until she laughed pushed at him. He grinned down at her.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. 

She blushed and shrugged. “Well, like I said, I don’t know how you think you’ll win with me, but if it helps you keep your sponsors...”

“We’ll win,” he said confidently and she beamed up at him.

“Okay.” He leaned down to kiss her again.

“Does this mean that you’re going to break your rules?” she asked when he moved his lips down to her neck to taste the skin there. He paused at the forced lightness in her voice.

He pulled back and met her gaze, which was open and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t seen from her before. _She thinks I’m going to blow her off now,_ he realized. The thought made it difficult to breathe through the sharp pain it caused in his chest.

“I guess it does,” he said as steadily as he could, not dropping his gaze from her own.

“So you want to...secretly.” She gestured between them and he stared at her.

“You must not think much of me,” he said in a flat tone and sat up.

Her eyes widened and she scrambled into a seated position. “Wh-what?”

“I mean, I don’t know what kind of guys you’ve been with before, but I’m not going to ask you to fuck me in secret.”

Mayu stared at him. “But...you said that it’s a pain if the press gets wind of it. I just thought -”

“If you were my girlfriend, I wouldn’t want to keep it a secret. I’d want to tell the whole damn world and screw the press,” he snapped, fuming at her lack of self-worth and every person who had contributed to it.

Mayu’s mouth worked before she said, “Girlfriend?”

Shikamaru froze. Well, there went all of his plans to not push. Though honestly, following her home and cuddling her for eight hours had probably already blown them out of the water. He ignored the pitying look Beaker was giving him from the back of the couch and glanced at her.

Her eyes were wide and her face was doing something that made his heart twist. “That’s not - sorry. You didn’t mean it like that, right?” She looked away and he reached out and lightly grabbed her wrist.

“I meant it.”

 “But you’ve just met me. I’m unemployed! And I’m weird - you’ve seen my apartment. You know that I used to be a criminal. You chased a killer down today because of me. And you-you're perfect! You’re handsome and smart and successful and you have _fans -”_

Shikamaru sighed, even as he admitted to himself that her description of him was pretty flattering. “I think you’re fantastic, alright? I’ve never felt this way before. So can you put me out of misery and give me a yes or no?”

Mayu snapped her mouth shut and looked down at her hands. “I - okay.”

Shikamaru stared at her. “Okay?”

“Um - yes?” She said and fidgeted under his stare.

“Alright. That - that’s good.” Well, all those convoluted schemes he and his father had come up with felt a little ridiculous, now.

He couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face and she returned it shyly. He reached over and pulled her close and didn’t protest when she moved to straddle his hips.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she said after a few minutes of making out. “I might be bad at it.”

Shikamaru tugged her closer and groaned when she ground herself against his erection. His voice sounded strained when he spoke. “I think you’re doing fine.”

Mayu grinned. “Does this mean we can have sex now?”

“Fuck. Yes, please,” he said and she leaned back to pull her shirt over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

“You’re killing me here, sweetheart. You’re so beautiful.” She buried her hands in his hair when he leaned forward to give her breasts the attention they clearly deserved.

They ended up on the bed, since that’s where the condoms were located, and Shikamaru took his time as he undressed her the rest of the way, running his fingers and lips across each bit of skin he exposed. She watched him from where she was lying across her sheets and each gasp and moan felt like a gift.

He’d had plenty of sex in his short life - it was hard not to when you were as well-known as Shikamaru - but this was different. This was about more than physical release. Since the first time he’d skated with Mayu, he’d known that he wanted to be with her.

She came apart under his mouth and fingers and he concentrated on committing her taste and the way the soft skin of her thighs felt under his hands to memory.

“Shikamaru, please.”

He kissed her abdomen before crawling up her body. Shikamaru studied her flushed skin and the marks he’d left on her neck with satisfaction as he rolled a condom over his erection. She tugged him down for a kiss and he groaned against her lips when he finally slipped into her.

Her breasts brushed against his chest and her legs came up to wrap around his hips. Her head was flung back, mouth open as she pulled air into her lungs. He rocked his hips and buried his face into her throat, leaving open-mouthed kisses everywhere he could reach.

Her fingers were digging into his shoulders and he should have been surprised by how quiet she was during sex, but somehow he wasn’t. She was soft and pliable and gorgeous like this and she arched up to meet every one of his thrusts.

When Shikamaru came, it was with the realization that sex with anybody else was probably ruined for him. He also realized that he didn’t care, not even a little bit.

000

“Your mother is so scary,” Mayu gasped, voice awed and eyes wide.

They’d just finished running the trail around the Nara property and were now completing fifty lunges while Yoshino yelled at some poor fool on her phone who was trying to insist that Shikamaru couldn’t use a temporary partner to compete with while Temari recovered.

“Mayu, straighten your back!” Yoshino yelled, then went back to listing off sub-laws of sub-laws to the no-doubt-traumatized intern on the other end of the terrifying conversation happening about ten feet from them.

Mayu _eeped_ and straightened her back and Shikamaru watched with thinly-veiled interest as she dipped low into her lunge. She was wearing a pair of yoga pants and a sports bra and her skin was glistening with sweat and she was altogether perfect.

His eyes lingered on the scar on her shoulder. She’d revealed under the cover of darkness as he drew patterns on her skin that it was a remnant of Jonathan Wagner’s attack years ago. He’d been aiming for her chest, but she’d managed to redirect the blow to her shoulder. Fugaku had burst in a few seconds later, otherwise Mayu would probably be dead. Shikamaru hated Jonathan Wagner and was rethinking his decision to hate Fugaku Uchiha.

Yoshino cleared her throat pointedly and Shikamaru pulled his gaze forward, ignoring the pleased upward turn of Mayu’s lips. The muscles in his legs were burning and his mother was still being terrifying behind him, but he was pretty sure that he’d never been happier.

They’d spent yesterday introducing Mayu to her training schedule and getting a baseline of her physical fitness levels. They were actually fairly good, since she ran a few times a week in preparation for her life as a detective, along with going to Tenten’s dojo three times a week.

They’d also bought her a new pair of skates, which they’d have to break in slowly over the next few weeks. Until then they were using the pair of old, beat up skates she had pulled out of the back of her closet for their more intense practices. Though they hadn’t actually made it to the ice yet.

“Yes, thank you, I already knew that I wasn’t breaking the rules, as I’ve been telling you for the past half an hour. Send me the paperwork to get Mayu Nomaka registered within the next ten minutes, or you _will_ be hearing from me again.”

Shikamaru winced at his mother’s angry muttering after she hung up and put more energy into his lunges. “After you’re done, Mayu, Shikamaru will show you the weight room and get you started there. Then, I want you two to take a break and eat the lunches I put in the fridge. Come find me at two - dammit, it’s the _Gazette_ again,” she said and they both winced.

The lecture Shikamaru had gotten yesterday over the media shit storm that had resulted from him chasing down a killer had been epic and humiliating in equal measure. Epic because his mother was a master lecturer, humiliating because Mayu had witnessed how pathetic he was in the face of her anger.  

“Yes, Yoshino Nara speaking,” she said in a sweet tone that didn’t fool anybody who knew her. “Oh, Anko, hello, how are you? What? No, Shikamaru has no plans to follow his cousin into police work.” A pause, then, “he was just giving a friend a ride and was in the right place at the right time.”

Shikamaru breathed through the urge to throw up, regretting his decision to skip a whole day of training and stuff himself full of Thai food. Next to him, Mayu’s breathing was ragged.

“A hero? Well, I don’t know about that. Yes, of course, my son is very brave...uh huh. Yes. What? Since when has Shikamaru ever been worried about the press, Anko? You know he avoids the spotlight.”

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. That was an understatement. He hustled Mayu inside as soon as they finished their lunges. His mother was starting to look a little rampagey and he didn’t want to get caught in the explosion when it came.

Mayu hesitated at the door to the house the way she had every time they entered it, as though unsure of her welcome. His parents had a lot of money and it showed in the quality of their possessions. The house wasn’t huge, but it was well-built, with tile imported from Italy and a downstairs that they converted into a gym for Shikamaru and Yoshino.

Shikamaru drove a Lexus and Yoshino and Shikaku both drove BMWs. Their appliances were all new and shiny and they paid cleaners that worked hard to keep the whole place sparkling despite the five cats wandering around. It tended to make some people nervous, Mayu especially so.

By the time they were downstairs, Mayu was holding Todd, whom his mother had rescued from the side of the road two years ago. He had half a tail and a constant expression of rage on his face. If Shikamaru dared to touch him, he always came out of the encounter bloody. Todd was currently nuzzling against Mayu’s shoulder and sending Shikamaru a smug look. Stupid Todd.

They’d both agreed to keep their interactions professional while they were training. It was a lot more difficult than Shikamaru had thought it would be. Why did women’s exercise gear have to be so tight? He forced his gaze away from where Mayu was using the kettlebell.

After a torturous hour of watching Mayu gasp and flex and twist her body around, he didn’t think anybody could blame him for lifting her onto the kitchen counter and kissing the hell out of her as soon as they were officially on ‘break.’

Her legs were wrapped around him and his hand was moving towards her breast when the sound of a throat clearing had him leaping away from her as though burned. He spun around and resisted the urge to bang his head on the fridge when he saw his uncles standing by the doorway to the kitchen. Ensui was leaning against the wall, smirking, and Eiji was studying them with two raised eyebrows.

“Of course it had to be you.” Shikamaru turned to the fridge to yank the neatly labeled, nutritionally balanced lunches Yoshino had made them from the top shelf.

When he turned back around Mayu was studying Ensui with interest. “You’re ex-military,” she said. “Black ops.”

Ensui’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah?” He drawled. “How do you figure that?”

She rolled her eyes and Shikamaru was reminded again of why he wanted to marry her at her complete lack of reaction to Ensui’s attempt at intimidation. Eiji’s mouth was twitching as he tried not to smile at Ensui’s failure to control the situation.

“Ugh, like it’s difficult to figure out? You’re in personal security now, though. That’s pretty cool,” she said and bounced up on the balls of her feet. Ensui seemed pleased at her description and Shikamaru tried not to sulk.

“This your new partner?” Eiji asked, probably sensing that an epic Nara blow-out that would involve pointed comments and drawled insults was imminent without intervention.

“Temporary partner,” Mayu said just as Shikamaru said, “She’s my girlfriend.”

Mayu’s cheeks heated and now it was his turn to have her adoring eyes on him. He tried not to look too pleased. Judging by Ensui’s fascinated expression, he failed.

Shikamaru cleared his throat and set their lunches on the table, then put his arm around her waist. “Eiji, Ensui, this is Mayu Nomaka. She’s going to skate with me until Temari is cleared for competition. She’s also my girlfriend.”

Eiji’s brows had climbed back up his forehead, but Ensui just chuckled. “Alright, I get it, I’ll be nice,” Ensui said. “Nice to meet you, Mayu.”

“Um. You too.” Mayu looked like she had no idea what to do with this unexpected meeting of Shikamaru’s extended family, so he pulled out a chair for her.

She sent him a thankful look and sat down, eyeing the chicken and salad in front of her. “Your mom really does control every aspect of your life,” she said and both Eiji and Ensui burst into surprised laughter.

Mayu blinked at them and her cheeks turned red when Eiji said, “I like her.”

Shikamaru slumped into his seat but didn’t grumble or complain when he saw how pleased she was by their acceptance. He took a bite of his salad and didn’t miss that his mother had included a piece of crusty bread and extra fruit in Mayu’s meal. She’d been casual when she mentioned that Mayu was underweight, but he was relieved to see that she was taking it seriously.

“So,” Ensui said as he sat down across from them. “Are you the reason my lazy nephew was running around chasing down criminals?”

Mayu eyed him suspiciously. “Shikamaru doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do. Well, unless Yoshino makes him,” she settled on and shoved more chicken into her mouth.

“Hmm, I suppose you’re right,” Ensui said and Eiji snickered and grabbed an apple out of the bowl of fruit on the table.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Shikamaru asked.

Ensui relaxed back in his chair and put his arm around Eiji’s shoulders. “Eiji needed to drop off the curtains he made for your mom.”

“I’m an interior designer,” Eiji explained to Mayu.

“You did their whole house,” she said matter-of-factly after swallowing a bite.

Eiji tilted his head to the side. “I did.”

“Huh. It’s nice. Though I would have gone with a different stain on the cupboards.”

Ensui groaned as Eiji brightened and Shikamaru dropped his head down on the table. “Not this again.”

How had she managed to focus in on the single biggest ongoing argument in the Nara household? It was a source of constant sniping every. Single. Holiday.

“That’s what I said, but Yoshino wouldn’t be swayed.”

Mayu shrugged but didn’t have a chance to respond before Shikaku entered the kitchen. He stopped and looked around when he realized that it was fuller than he had expected.

“You,” he said as Mayu set down her fork and swallowed her bite. “I don’t know you.”

“Dad, this is Mayu. Mayu, this is my dad -”

“Shikaku Nara. War hero and one of the only voices of reason on the conglomerate of idiots that make up our local government,” she said and Shikamaru hid his smile behind a sip of water while Shikaku stared at her, giving a long slow blink that meant he was feeling off balance.

Shikamaru glanced at the clock. It was one-fifteen. “We’ve got to go,” he said, then shoveled the last of his lunch into his mouth.

Mayu frowned but didn’t argue when he stood and grabbed her bread, the only portion of her lunch she hadn’t eaten and handed it to her. “Bye dad, by Eiji and Ensui.”

He tugged her out of the kitchen and up the stairs as she took a large bite of bread and waved goodbye to his father and uncles. He had a perfectly serviceable bed upstairs that he wanted to introduce her to.

000

Shikamaru winced as he hit the ice, already anticipating the large, ugly bruise that was sure to make itself known the next morning. Next to him, Mayu flopped over onto her back.

“Ouch,” she grumbled, but didn’t protest when he struggled to his feet and held a hand out to help her up.

“You need to hold your form on that last twist, Mayu!” Yoshino called from across the ice.

“Sorry.” Mayu reached out to touch his hip lightly and bit her lip. “I keep messing that up.”

“It’s alright,” he said with a shrug. “It’s part of learning. You’ll get it down.”

He meant it, too. He’d taken much worse falls than that, and Mayu was actually picking up the routine faster than he and his mother had expected. They had about five weeks until regionals and he thought that they had a real chance of placing. After thirteen days of training under Yoshino, Mayu was improving quickly.

“Again?” he asked and she smiled up at him.

“Yeah, alright.” Unable to resist, he reeled her in with a hand on her waist kissed her lightly.

“We’re training,” she scolded when he pulled back, but her smile was broad and her eyes were bright, so he kissed her again.

“Yeah, well, you’re unfairly beautiful,” he said, partly because it was true and partly because he knew it would make her blush.

He tugged on her hand, skating towards their starting point. His mother, who had been not-so-subtly fussing over Mayu since she started training with them, was pretending to be distracted by her clipboard so she didn’t have to yell at them for kissing instead of skating.

Mayu spun in place in front of him and at Yoshino’s signal, they started. Mayu was becoming more fluid in her movements. She lifted her leg into the air and dipped down low and into a spin without difficulty while he did the same a few feet from her.

They both transitioned into a lutz and then he grabbed her hand. They began skating backward, building up speed. This time, when she turned so that her back was to him, he knew as soon as he put his hands on her waist that they were going to pull the throw off.

He lifted as she jumped, propelling her into the air at a ninety-degree angle from the ground. She did a triple spin and he caught her with perfect timing as she completed the last turn. Her blades hit the ice and she lifted one foot into the air behind her as they glided forward and beamed up at him.

Her hand was warm in his own and he pulled her in for a hug, aware that his mom was cheering in the background. She leaned up and kissed him, her cold nose pressing against his cheek.

“We did it!” she said.

“We did,” he agreed and couldn’t resist another kiss, though it didn’t last long since she was vibrating with excitement.

“Let’s do it again,” she said. “It was so fun.”

“Alright.” He’d probably agree with just about anything when she said it with that adorable expression.

“Mayu! Can you come over here, please?”

Shikamaru looked over at his mother and frowned when he saw she wasn’t alone. Torii was standing at the entrance to the ice talking in low tones to her and behind him, watching Mayu and Shikamaru with an unreadable expression was Fugaku Uchiha.

Mayu stiffened in his arms and he tightened his grip on her.

“What are they doing here?” Maybe they had come to apologize to Mayu. Did that mean she’d quit and go back to following Fugaku around?

“I’m not going to flake out,” she said and he blinked down at her. She was scowling up at him.

“It’s written all over your face,” she said dismissively before he could ask her how she had known what he was thinking. “Come on. Let’s go see what they want.”

He tried not to look overly pleased that she’d included him in her upcoming conversation. He wove his fingers through hers as they skated over to the two police officers and she flashed him a surprised smile. She still seemed a little dismayed every time he offered her unsolicited affection, but she always soaked it up like a snooty, filter-less sponge.

“Mayu,” Torii greeted.

“We’re practicing, Torii,” Shikamaru said when Mayu didn’t respond. She was avoiding looking at Fugaku and Yoshino was looking between them with a small furrow between her brows.

“We need to talk to Mayu,” Fugaku intoned.

“I thought you didn’t want to see my face again until I was an officer.”

Shikamaru was back to hating Fugaku when her voice wobbled halfway through her statement. Yoshino was now glaring at him, too, and Shikamaru winced when he heard the clipboard she was holding creak under her grip.

“I may have been too harsh when we last spoke.” Fugaku’s voice was still calm, but he sent a wary look Yoshino’s way that raised Shikamaru’s estimation of his intelligence.

Mayu shrugged and looked down at her skates. “What do you need to talk to me about?” she said instead of addressing his non-apology.

“Perhaps we should speak in private,” he said and Torii snorted, probably knowing that Shikamaru and Yoshino were both too nosy to be kept out of whatever was happening here.

“It’s okay; you can say whatever it is in front of Shikamaru and Yoshino. If you’re here to arrest me, they’ll need to know, anyway.”

Fugaku pressed his lips together but didn’t take the bait. Mayu was still looking off to the side, doing her best to look unaffected by Fugaku’s presence. Torii glanced between the two of them and rolled his eyes.

“Okay, so I guess I’ll take the lead here. Mayu -” he hesitated and Shikamaru was hit with the mostly-unfamiliar sensation of anxiety when his face softened.

Mayu let go of his hand and crossed her arms over her chest. “Spit it out, Torii.”

His expression went annoyed and his brow twitched. “Jonathan Wagner was just let out on parole.”

Mayu stopped all movement. The anxiety Shikamaru had been struggling with expanded until he was having a difficult time breathing through it. Yoshino just looked confused.

“How the fuck did he get out on parole? He almost killed her!” Shikamaru snapped and moved closer to her. When he glanced over, her eyes were wide and her face was pale, but she was visibly trying to hold herself together.

“What? What are you talking about?” Yoshino asked and Shikamaru forgave her for every indignity she’d visited upon him the past few months when she glided over to Mayu’s side and added her glare to Shikamaru’s own.

“Okay, now I kinda wish I’d let you tell me in private,” Mayu muttered, but she was looking a little better now that they were both visibly offering her support.

“To answer your question, we think his father may have bribed somebody.” Fugaku had decided to join the conversation, it seemed. He was ignoring the two furious Nara in front of him focusing on Mayu. “We won’t let him get close to you.”

“Is that an actual concern? You think this guy might try again right after getting released for trying to kill her?” All of the tightness in Shikamaru’s chest was swooping down into his stomach and he swallowed thickly when Torii grimaced.

“His behavior towards Mayu was bordering on obsessive. He may have received the treatment he needed. According to the board at his parole hearing, he’s responding well to medication and stable. But, well, we're not sure how far we can trust that.”

“Somebody needs to tell me who Jonathan Wagner is, and why we think Mayu’s in danger,” Yoshino said in her calm-before-the-storm voice and Torii held his hands up, well aware of what would happen once she lost her temper.

While he caught Yoshino up to speed Shikamaru turned to Mayu. “You okay?” he asked in a low tone.

She glanced up from where she’d been staring at the ice and chewing on her lower lip. “Yeah. I mean, even if he did something stupid like attack me, I can take care of myself now. I doubt he learned martial arts in prison,” she said and rolled her eyes.

“Mayu, you need to take this seriously,” Fugaku interjected and everyone’s attention was brought back to her. 

“You mean, as seriously as the parole board took it?” she shot back. “Thanks for stopping by to tell me, but I can handle it from here. I’ll see you after I pass the academy, I guess.”

She turned and was all dramatic huffiness as she skated away. Fugaku was staring after her with an unreadable expression that still managed to convey sadness. Shikamaru resisted the urge to go after her when Yoshino spun on Torii to start grilling him for information. 

“Tell me what you’re doing about this, right now. And the answer better not be ‘wait and see,’ Torii Nara, or I’ll be having words with your mother.”

Shikamaru crossed his arms over his chest and glared while Torii tried not to look terrified. Fugaku was now studying Yoshino with what looked like respect.

“We’ve already discussed it, and while the department isn’t willing to put resources towards her protection, my team will put in extra hours to watch over her, at least for a few weeks.”

“Uncle Ensui can probably help us set up extra security,” Shikamaru said.

“Maybe she could move into our house -”

“No,” Mayu said and they all jumped.

Their voices must have carried across the ice because she’d gone from practicing double axels to skating back over to them. Her cheeks were red and her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.

“I don’t need anybody to watch over me. I can take care of myself, now. If Wagner comes, he’ll get a nasty surprise, is all.”

Fugaku sent her a dismissive look. “A member of my team _will_ be keeping an eye on you, and you will not try to ‘lose’ them. You will also stay away from Wagner, Mayu, no trying to take him down on your own.”

“I don’t need you taking time out of your days to help out an _annoyance,_ okay? And I’m not moving out of my place. I’ve got delicate experiments in progress and I can’t just leave them behind.”

Shikamaru thought about arguing, but then decided that he’d just find a way to invite himself over to her house every evening. His mother’s eyes had narrowed and she looked like she was about to say something that would escalate the situation.

“Come on, Mayu,” he said quickly. “Let’s do that set again; then we’ll work on the footwork and spins for the next section.”

Mayu narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t argue when he pulled her back over to their starting point. 

“It’s okay, we’re just going to skate, alright?” he rumbled into her ear when she remained stiff in his arms.

She took a deep breath and her body relaxed when she let it out. She turned her head towards him and gave him a small, tremulous smile that he was fairly certain broke his heart into about a million pieces.

“Alright. We’re just going to skate.” She repeated the words to herself and he nodded.

“Mmm-hmm. Just focus on me. Ready?”

She nodded and they both moved in tandem. Their actions were perfectly in sync, both of their blades hitting the ice at the same time after completing the lutz. He tossed her into the air and watched, mesmerized by the way the lights of the rink reflected on her hair and the perfect angles of her body. He caught her as she came down, and when her momentum carried her away from him, he had a clear view of her bright smile.

It hit him, then, just how invested he was in this woman. He’d felt attraction mixed with affection before. Temari was a perfect example. Their first sixteen months of skating had been an exercise in resisting sexual tension and the battering of hormones against his resolve. He had never, however, felt such a pull towards somebody.

Shikamaru was going to burn Jonathan Wagner’s world to the ground if he came within ten feet of her. He was pulled from his dark thoughts when Mayu squeezed his hand. Her smile had faded and she was looking at him like he was a puzzle she was trying to solve.

He mustered up a smile and dug his blades into the ice to come to a stop. “Mom! We’re ready for the next set.”

He turned and scowled when he saw Torii was lounging in the stands. Mayu grumbled something next to him but pointedly looked away from his cousin. Fugaku was nowhere to be seen.

“Okay. Let’s do a death spiral and then we’ll move into some toe jumps,” Yoshino said.

“I’ve never done a death spiral.” Mayu's face lit with interest. “I mean, obviously, since it’s a pair move and I’ve only ever skated by myself.”

“Well, we’ll start with the simple ones, but to place, we’ll probably need to do a backward outside edge, if possible.”

Shikamaru nodded slowly and Mayu bounced up on her toes. “I read about those! A hand-change would possibly increase the score too, right?”

He tried not to look overly charmed by her enthusiasm, but assumed he failed when Torii let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like the word ‘whipped.’

“It does, but we don’t want to give you too many complicated new moves to perfect. You two just need to place third for Shikamaru and Temari to make it to Nationals.” They’d already discovered that she wasn’t harboring any resentment at being a fill-in, so they didn’t try to talk around it.

“Please, it can’t be that hard,” she said dismissively. “Once I get the mechanics down I won’t mess it up.”

She also didn’t suffer from any false modesty when it came to her abilities. She saved her self-doubt for her relationships, it seemed.

Yoshino motioned for Shikamaru to stand with her, though he could see she was fighting a smile. “Okay. We’re going to do a backward without the hand switch first. Watch closely, Mayu, then I'll work with you on the mechanics after.”

Shikamaru took his mother's hand after she handed her clipboard to Mayu. Skating with his mother was familiar and comfortable. She’d been the one to teach him everything he knew, after all. She spun around him and he lifted his leg into an arabesque as she twisted her body.

Then, using their built up momentum to assist their movements, she straightened her body and they both lowered, Shikamaru pivoting in place on one skate while she kept her body stiff and parallel to the ice and spun around him. He could hear Torii whistling in the background as they rose from the move and Yoshino turned in place before coming to a stop.

Mayu’s eyes were bright and she was bouncing in place. “You’re so cool, Yoshino!”

Yoshino huffed but looked pleased with the compliment. She pulled Mayu over towards her. “Hold this,” she said to Shikamaru and passed the clipboard over.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes, but took it and then skated over to Torii. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Torii took the clipboard from him and shrugged. “I’ve decided to take some leave time this week. I think I’ll hang out with my famous figure-skating cousin.”

“Right,” Shikamaru said in a flat tone. “Mayu’s not going to see through that ruse at all.”

“She’s good,” Torii said instead of responding to his sarcasm.

Shikamaru turned and leaned back against the wall separating them and rested his elbows on it. Yoshino was having Mayu extend her body into a plank and was adjusting her form minutely and talking to her in a low tone. He ruined his attempt at nonchalance when his voice came out sounding like a dreamy thirteen-year-old girl's instead of that of a grown man’s. “Yeah. She’s pretty fantastic.”

Torii didn’t respond immediately, but Shikamaru felt his eyes on him. “I’ve known her since she was a punk-ass kid that was living off the money she made as a hacker. Don’t screw this up, cousin.”

Shikamaru glanced back at him over his shoulder. “I don’t intend to.”

000

“Ow,” Mayu whimpered. She collapsed back on the bench and Shikamaru huffed out a laugh and sat at her feet.

They were both bruised and sore and ready to take a break. He wondered if he could convince her to soak in his large jacuzzi with him before they went out to her house. Torii was sitting up in the stands typing away at a laptop in front him, where he’d been parking himself every day for the past week.

Mayu had been infuriated when she noticed the unmarked police cars following them whenever they changed location from the rink, to Shikamaru’s house, or to her apartment. They didn’t have a lot of time to go anywhere else since they spent most of their waking hours training. Eventually, she’d given in, probably because Yoshino kept them too busy for her to focus on her annoyance.

So far they hadn’t seen any sign that Jonathan Wagner was hanging around. Mayu refused to talk about it, though she had let Ensui install a security system at her windows and door.

Shikamaru had a feeling that it had more to do with him not sleeping the first few nights after they found out he’d been released. He had jerked awake at every creak or thump, ready to leap out of bed and kill any would-be Mayu attackers.

Now if somebody broke in both the police and Ensui would be notified by the system. It had helped him sleep better and also given him an idea of how much sway he held over Mayu. He had a feeling that her fierce independent streak wasn't pleased with all the extra fuss.

He finished taking off his skates and then turned to unlace hers. She lifted her head and grinned at him and he squeezed her calf before working at the knot in the strings.

“Torii, Mayu, do you want to come over for dinner?” Yoshino called from where she was holding the phone away from her mouth, probably on the phone with Shikaku. “Ensui and Eiji are there - Eiji cooked.”

Mayu looked over at Shikamaru. “We could soak first,” he offered and waggled his eyebrows.

She snickered, presumably remembering their last foray into the jacuzzi. It had involved a lot of water sloshed across the bathroom floor and Mayu winning a bet that she could, indeed, hold her breath underwater for three minutes. While multitasking.

“Sure!” she yelled, then thumped her head back on the bench as Torii called out his agreement, as well.

“Yay,” she muttered. She was still doing her level best to ignore Torii, who for his part seemed amused by the silent treatment.

They made it to the house by six and Shikamaru waved at Dai as he parked outside the house well away from the driveway. Mayu glared at him but didn’t say anything as she got out of the car and stalked towards the house. Shikamaru followed, pausing to look at the rental car parked in their driveway. He didn’t remember his mother mentioning any visitors.

He jogged to catch up to Mayu just as she reached the steps and tugged her back against him so he could kiss her neck. She laughed and elbowed him lightly but didn’t pull away. He retaliated by digging his fingers into her side and she squirmed against him, which had been his goal.

He heard the door open and looked up into the surprised face of Temari, who was standing in the entryway. He paused mid-motion and gaped at her. Temari’s smile faded and her eyes darted between the two of them. 

“Temari,” he said. Mayu stiffened and stepped away from him.

He was hit with sudden relief to have her there. She always offered a sort of upfront, problem-solver attitude that he could honestly use in the face of his anxiety over Jonathan Wagner.

He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. She made a surprised sound but wrapped her arms around him. “Hey, Nara, you miss me that much?”

Shikamaru pulled back and sent her a smile. “I did, actually. I’m glad you’re here, Temari.”

She gripped his arm and her face softened. “Me, too. I decided to finish up my PT here - surprise! Now I can help your mother get you and my fill-in ready for competition, and she can help me get back into shape."

“That’s good.” He loved skating with Mayu, but Temari was his partner and he honestly couldn’t imagine finishing out the last few years of his career as a professional skater without her.

“So, you got a girlfriend while I was gone?” she prompted, motioning towards Mayu, and Shikamaru jolted.

He turned towards Mayu, who had somehow ended up at the bottom of the steps and was standing with her arms wrapped around her middle, eyes darting between them. Shikamaru held out a hand to her and she hesitated before climbing the steps and sliding her palm into his.

“Temari, this is Mayu, my girlfriend and the woman who’s going to get us through regionals. Mayu, this is Temari, my partner.”

Mayu waved and he frowned at her uncharacteristic silence. Temari’s eyes had gone wide and she frowned. “I thought you didn’t sleep with skaters."

Mayu took a small step back, but Shikamaru put an arm around her and squeezed her hip lightly in support. “Well, she’s an exception.”

Temari nodded once, slowly, and studied her with interest. “I can see that. It’s nice to meet you, Mayu. Thank you so much for filling in for me. You really saved our asses.”

Shikamaru let out a breath of relief when they shook hands. “It’s no problem. It’s, um, a lot of fun, actually.”

“Well,” Temari said after an awkward pause. “Eiji said dinner’s about ready, so.”

They followed her inside and Temari reached over and tugged on Shikamaru’s ponytail. “You need to get this cut. The ends are all ragged; you can’t compete like this! Eventually, the press are going to bombard you and you can’t go on camera with this hair.”

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and batted her hand away. “Yeah, yeah, take it down a notch, woman. I’ll get it done.”

Temari’s eyes narrowed. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

Shikamaru slumped. “But -”

“Your mom will agree.”

“You and my mom always agree on anything that makes me miserable,” he grumped and she gave him an obnoxious smile and put her arm around his neck to tug his head down so she could run her knuckles over the top of it.

“You’re a grumpy bastard no matter what we do, so we may as well have fun with it.” She ignored his struggles and gave one last twist of her knuckles before letting him go.

He signed explosively as he reached up to fix his hair but couldn’t stop his small smile. Temari was a total pain, but he’d missed her. Plus, she was right - without her around he tended to put things off like getting his hair trimmed. He followed her into the kitchen where Eiji and Ensui were putting together dinner.

Ensui tossed his arm over Temari’s shoulders. “Hey, kid, how’s the leg?”

The door to the garage opened and Torii and Yoshino entered the kitchen a moment later, Temari’s reply was lost in the flurry of hugs and greetings that resulted. Temari was practically a part of the family.

She and her brothers actually spent holidays with the Naras, since their parents had been killed in a car accident when she was seventeen. It had been a tense day in their house when she was injured and everybody's relief to have her back in the fold was obvious.

Shikamaru turned around and frowned when he saw Mayu standing just inside the door. She was watching the proceedings with a strange expression, arms hanging at her sides. Shikamaru went to take a step towards her, but then Shikaku was coming in and Eiji was shoving plates into his arms and telling him to set the table.

The next few minutes were a blur of chatter and clanking plates and silverware as his family attempted to get dinner ready and find out what Temari had been doing every minute of every day while she’d been in Suna. By the time they sat down, they had discovered the answer was mostly ‘boss my brothers around and go to physical therapy.’

Temari plopped down next to him and he scowled when she grabbed the chicken just as he reached for it. “You’re the worst; I didn’t miss you at all.”

She gave him a noisy kiss on the cheek and he rolled his eyes. Shikaku was asking Ensui about a client he’d referred to him and Eiji and Yoshino were arguing hotly over whether the curtains he dropped off a few weeks ago were too dark for the room.

Shikamaru glanced to his left to see what Mayu would say - she always had something to add that was sure to escalate the situation whenever Yoshino and Eiji started talking interior design - and blinked when he saw her chair was empty. He frowned and turned around to see if she was in the kitchen grabbing something, but it was empty.

“Mom, where’s Mayu?”

Yoshino cut off in the middle of a sentence about lace - he didn’t want to know - and frowned. “She was just here - I saw her at the door when we were sitting down. Maybe she had to use the bathroom.”

“Maybe,” Shikamaru said, but there was a lead weight in his stomach that told him she wasn’t in the house anymore. He took out his phone and sure enough, there was a text message from Mayu.

_Just remembered a delicate experiment I need to check on and I don’t want Beaker to get lonely. I’ll see you tomorrow._

Shikamaru stared down at the text. No invite to join her, no tacked on innuendos. He glanced over at Temari, who was shamelessly reading over his shoulder. He turned the screen away and scowled at her. The messages above the one she'd just sent were decidedly dirty and she was already pointing at him and laughing.

“Oh man, Shikamaru, who knew you had it in you? In the stairwell? _Really?”_

“Temari, I swear to god -”

“Oh Shikamaru, you should come over and do that thing with your mouth in the stairwell again. I think we haven’t traumatized my neighbors enough as it is,” Temari said in a high-pitched, breathy tone and put her hands to her chest.

Shikaku and Ensui were sending him identical looks of disbelief and his mother’s eyes had narrowed. “You better not be doing anything that could traumatize other people in public. I’m sure the judges at the next competition wouldn’t be biased _at all_ if it got out -”

“Jesus, Yoshino, let the kid have a sex life. Not everything is about ice skating -”

“Shikamaru, try not to give the rest of the council more reason to hate me -”

Temari was laughing loudly over his family’s input on his love life and he sighed and stood. “I’ll be right back."

“Did she text him?” he heard Eiji ask.

“Yeah, she said she had to go check on her experiments and that her beaker was lonely? Is she a scientist or something?

“Yes, but, Beaker is her cat -”

“She’s a cop -”

“She’s a genius -”

“The girl is crazy.”

He rolled his eyes as his know-it-all family started talking over each other. They weren’t generally this rowdy, but they tended to be a little much when they were all together. He took out his phone and texted her.

_I would have given you a ride._

He leaned against the wall in the hallway and didn’t have to wait long for a reply. _Dai gave me a ride. He said that there'd be somebody watching all night, too, so you don’t need to worry about Wagner._

His brow furrowed. _I could come over after dinner and bring you leftovers._

_You should spend time with your family. I’ll order something._

Shikamaru drummed his fingers on the wall. Mayu hadn’t ever turned down a chance to hang out with him, even though they already spent so much time together training. She also seemed to like his family and they’d grown fond of her, too.

He remembered the look on her face as she’d stood at the door watching them. Like she was an outsider staring in at something she wanted but couldn’t have. And like an idiot, he’d allowed himself to get distracted.

_I want to come over._

There was a long pause before she answered. _I don’t want you to. I just want to be alone._

He fisted his hand at his side and tried not to focus on the sting of rejection that was making it difficult to breathe. It was perfectly reasonable for Mayu to want to spend some time alone. They couldn’t just live in each other’s pockets. Just because he never got tired of her didn’t mean she was the same way.

He shoved his phone into his pocket in a sudden fit of pique. Fine, if she wanted to be alone, he wouldn't argue. He’d just have Torii ask Dai to keep an extra close eye on her. Mayu was obviously too focused on being independent to let him worry over her.

“Uh oh,” Ensui said as soon as he sulked back into the room. “Everything okay with Mayu?”

He glared at the interested faces staring back at him from the table. If it weren’t for them being overbearing know-it-alls, she probably wouldn’t even be upset. Would it have killed them to keep their cool instead of fawning all over Temari?

“Yes. She’s just tired,” he said and sat down, ignoring the meaningful looks that his parents exchanged.

“You sure she’s not just upset that your real partner came back?” Temari asked and blinked when she was hit with six separate Unimpressed Nara Stares. “Um. Or not.”

“Mayu’s not like that,” Shikamaru said even if he thought there might be a grain of truth to her observation. It just didn’t have anything to do with their skating and had everything to do with feeling like an outsider. Shit, maybe he should go over there, after all.

“Well, there have been a lot of changes in her life lately,” Yoshino said, tone gentle, and when he looked up, she wearing her Supportive Mother smile. “If she needs a night to herself, you should give it to her.”

Shikamaru glanced over at Ensui, who nodded minutely, and he slumped over in his seat. “...Fine.”

The conversation moved on to Gaara’s recent take over of his father’s law firm, which had been being run by an interim president until he was ready. Shikamaru only listened with half an ear the rest of the night, though he did his best to engage with Temari.

He sent one annoyed look at the jacuzzi tub in his bathroom before taking a quick shower and falling into bed, though he made sure to keep his phone on and close to him on his bedside table. No matter how many times he’d checked it that night, there’d been no text or calls from Mayu.

His annoyance with her had faded and he was mostly feeling disappointed that she’d pushed him away instead of talking to him. After a moment of hesitation, he sent her a text.  _Miss you and Beaker. I’ll come pick you up tomorrow and take you for coffee before practice. Goodnight, sweetheart._

By the time he fell asleep she still hadn’t responded, though his message was marked as read. It would have to be enough until he could speak to her in person.

Still, it took him a long time to fall asleep without her warm weight next to him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wagner makes his move and Shikamaru just can't keep his mouth shut when it comes to Mayu. Also, skating.

Shikamaru was awoken by banging on his door sometime in the middle of the night. “Shikamaru! Shikaku! Wake up!”

It was Ensui, who’d ended up staying in one of the guest bedrooms after he and Eiji drank too much wine to drive home. A depressingly frequent state of affairs, actually. Maybe Shikamaru should get his own place. A three bedroom, so Mayu could have a lab and he could have an office.

“What is it?” He sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes just as Ensui opened his door. He heard Shikaku come out into the hall and ask what the hell was going on.

“Next time I’m getting a hotel room,” Temari’s annoyed voice said from her own door down the hall. “I thought you were all supposed to be logical and quiet.”

“I just got an alert from Mayu’s security system. I think somebody’s broken in,” Ensui said instead of responding to the sniping around him and they all went silent. Shikamaru was already scrambling out of bed and picking up his phone.

“I tried to call the guy I have watching her - there he is,” he answered his phone as Shikamaru unlocked his own screen with shaking fingers.

“Answer,” he said when he put the phone between his ear and shoulder and grabbed yesterday’s pants from the floor. He hopped on one foot as he tugged them on, listening to each ring of the line with a sinking heart. “Answer, answer, answer...”

“Sasuke, hey,” Ensui said into his phone. “He what? Son of a bitch. Is she okay?” Shikamaru’s breath caught and he paused in his frantic attempt to get his pants on so he could concentrate on what Ensui was saying. “No shit. Thatta girl.”

He relaxed a bit - if she was in real trouble Ensui wouldn't sound so amused. Mayu’s voicemail picked up in his ear.  _“If I didn’t answer, it’s because I knew you were going to be dull. Don’t bother leaving a message. Also, learn to text.”_

Shikamaru’s lips quirked even as he strained to listen to Ensui’s one-sided conversation. “Right, cops are on the way. No, don’t pursue. Stay with her. Where in the hell is Fugaku’s guy? Uh huh. Okay, we’ll be there in fifteen.”

Shikamaru shot a text off to Mayu. _Are you okay? We’re on our way._

Ensui hung up his phone and turned to the people in the hallway, face expressionless. Shikamaru pushed his way out as he tugged his track pants up all the way.

“Babe, what is it?” Eiji asked and Shikamaru could just make out his tense expression in the low lighting. Yoshino and Shikaku were crowded up behind him and Temari was next to them, letting Yoshino grip her hand tightly despite her confusion.

“Somebody broke into Mayu’s apartment. They attacked her.”

“Oh fuck,” Shikamaru said. “Is she -”

Ensui cut his hand through the air. “She’s alright. Sasuke said she beat the crap out of the guy. Breathe, Shikamaru.”

He hadn’t realized that he had stopped until Ensui pointed it out and he sucked in a desperate breath. The spots that had started to form in the corners of his vision faded. “We need to go over there.”

“I’ll drive,” Shikaku volunteered.

“We’ll take my car, too,” Eiji added as Ensui’s phone rang again. Shikamaru's family scattered to go put on clothes.

“Torii. Yeah, we’re on our way. I had Sasuke watching her place from an Airbnb one floor up. He showed up just as the perp ran off.

“No, he was in a mask, Sasuke couldn’t ID him. Yeah. No, I don’t know where your guy is.” Another pause as Torii presumably said something. “No, I told him to stay with Mayu, she’s alright, maybe a little beat up. Send the ambulance just in case.”

Shikamaru made a choking sound and then Temari was pulling him against her with an arm around his shoulder. “She’s fine, Shikamaru. It’s fine. Come on, let’s go to the car.”

The ride across town to Mayu’s place was a blur of anxiety and his mother’s soothing tones. He shouldn’t have listened to his family when they told him to give her space. He should have gone over there and insisted she let him in. Instead, she’d been alone. Just like she had been the last time Wagner went after her.

His self-recrimination hit peak levels when they came to a screeching halt in front of Mayu’s place just as an ambulance showed up. There were already two unmarked police cars and a patrol vehicle was pulling up to the curb. Shikamaru realized that his father must have broken a dozen traffic laws to get them there so fast.

Shikamaru jumped out of the car before it came to a full stop. He was halfway up the walk when the door swung open. “God, Sasuke, why are you even here -”

“Mayu, you’re supposed to wait inside.”

“I need to find my cat. I can’t believe your dad had you stationed inside the building. What did you do, rent out the apartment upstairs?”

Shikamaru’s steps faltered when she stopped beneath the security light at the door. Her lip was split and she was bleeding from a cut on her bare bicep that looked fairly nasty. A man with dark eyes and hair and almost feminine good looks had a hold of her other arm and was glaring down at her.

“My dad didn’t send me, my boss did,” he said and sighed explosively when she tugged her arm out of his grasp and evaded two cops who had followed them out the door and were crowding around her.

“Your boss? Who...” Mayu’s eyes were darting around and she didn’t seem focused on the conversation. Still, she made the connection quickly. “Ensui? Ensui is the evil private sector security guy who stole you from the grasp of the KPD? No wonder Fugaku glared at Shikamaru.”

“Ma’am, we need you to come sit down,” a paramedic said as he and his short, curly-haired partner sidled up to her. Shikamaru shook himself out of his horrified daze just as his family joined him on the sidewalk.

“I need to find my cat.” Mayu rushed down the steps.

Her feet were bare and mostly disappeared under the overly-long flannel pajama pants that Shikamaru recognized as a pair he’d left behind at her place a few weeks ago. He strode across the grass towards her as she bent at her waist to look under a pair of bushes growing against the building.

“Beaker. Here, kitty, kitty. Come on, the bad man is gone.”

She straightened and spun towards the other side of the lawn, twisting away from Sasuke when he reached for her again and jogging to a small tree to peer up into its branches. Shikamaru quickened his strides to follow, aware that his family was following behind him. The paramedics were right on her heels, talking in low soothing tones that she ignored.

She made a sound of frustration, presumably when she didn’t see her cat, and turned on her heels. Shikamaru saw the slight tremor in her hands and her wide, slightly glazed eyes and knew she wasn’t doing quite as well as she would like everybody to think when it took her a few seconds to recognize him.

“Shikamaru,” she said and he made a distressed noise when her eyes filled with tears.

He crossed the space between them in two strides, knocking into the male paramedic in his rush and pushing a scowling Sasuke aside, then wrapped his arms around her. “Are you okay?”

She clung to him and shook her head. “No! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Ensui’s grumpy goon. Beaker ran out when Wagner busted in the door. I think he somehow made it out of the building. I have to find him, Shikamaru.” She pulled back and he carefully cupped her face in her hands. “He’s too lazy to survive on his own and he was so scared when Wagner threw me into the table.” She sniffled and Shikamaru gritted his teeth at her casual description of Wagner tossing her around.

“He won’t stop pestering me, though, and - and if Beaker dies, then I’ll be all alone. He’s all I have,” she said and started crying in earnest.

Shikamaru pulled her back in and cupped the back of her head, glancing back at his gawking family in desperation. His mother’s face cleared from its pinched expression and she put her hands on her hips.

“Mayu Nomaka,” she said and Mayu jumped in his arms, then peeked around him. Shikamaru turned his body so that he could follow her gaze without craning his neck. “You’re going to get those injuries taken care of. We’ll find Beaker for you. I promise,” she said, eyes lit with an inner fire that usually meant Yoshino was about to get her way, come hell or high water.

“Um, Shikamaru, why is your whole family here?” she hissed as Ensui stalked past her to start grilling Sasuke. Torii and Fugaku chose that moment to appear and started pushing their way through the various and sundry Nara, because things weren’t already overwhelming enough.

“They -”

He was cut off when Fugaku physically pushed him aside to put his hands on Mayu’s shoulders and look her over.

“Hey,” Shikamaru protested, but it was weak.

The skin around Fugaku’s eyes tightened and he ignored him as he brought the back of two fingers up to Mayu’s lip. Mayu blinked at him.

“Uh, hey Fugaku. Are you okay? You look kind of -” she squeaked when he pulled her in for a hug. Her eyes were wide and after a moment she brought up one hand and patted him awkwardly on the back.

Sasuke put two fingers to his forehead while Torii and Ensui continued to grill him, though his face softened minutely when he caught sight of the most awkward hug ever.

Torii followed his gaze and let out a breath of air. “Finally. Every time they argue it’s like they’re competing for the prize of Most Emotionally Constipated.”

“They do this often?” Shikamaru blurted before he could stop himself, sounding just as scandalized as he felt.

Torii snorted. “Not usually this bad, but every once in awhile Mayu will do something spectacularly stupid, even for her. The captain spectacularly over-reacts and Mayu spends a few days acting like a kicked puppy while Fugaku drowns in guilt. Usually, the first apology takes, though.”

He said all of that in a low voice that wouldn’t carry and Sasuke rolled his eyes. “I hate it when they fight. Dad starts bugging me about falling in line and joining the KPD when he doesn’t have Mayu to focus all of his disapproval on.”

Shikamaru rubbed a hand down his face as a horrifying realization hit him. If he had his way, the Uchiha were practically going to be his in-laws. Fuck. Mayu pulled away from Fugaku after a short, murmured conversation that Shikamaru couldn't hear and sidled up to him. He put his arm around her shoulders and tugged her in close. Worth it.

Yoshino was behind them giving out orders to the Nara around her like a deranged general. Shikamaru caught the words _grid pattern_ and  _failure will not be accepted._ Temari had her hands on her hips and was nodding along seriously. Beaker would be found within the hour, Shikamaru would bet his skates on it.

“Torii! You’ll go with Temari and search the Southeast Sector,” Yoshino barked and his cousin groaned.

“Aunt Yoshino, I’m _working,”_ he said, sounding the opposite of grown up. Mayu snickered and one side of Shikamaru’s lips lifted into a smile.

His mother’s eyes narrowed and Torii was saved from a tongue lashing when Dai appeared. “Captain. We located Detective Bryant.”

Mayu stiffened next to him, ignoring the paramedic who was now dabbing at the cut on her arm. “Bryant? He was my protection duty?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Torii mumbled but he was focused on Dai. “I’m guessing from your expression that he’s not dead or knocked out?”

Dai’s whole countenance could have been cut from stone, but Shikamaru was fairly certain he was enraged. “No. He was down the street getting a sandwich. He just returned.”

The world around them went quiet. Ensui and Sasuke were wearing identical, pinched expressions and the Nara that had been shuffling off to go cat-hunting all stopped and turned to stare at Torii. Fugaku’s face had lost all expression, save for the slight tightening of skin around his lips and eyes.

“Bryant, not doing his job to the full extent of his capabilities? Shocking,” Mayu said, breaking the tension. “He’s probably just disappointed that Wagner didn’t get in more than a few good hits.”

Shikamaru sighed and pulled her closer to him, wondering if he was doomed to her being so cavalier about threats to her life and safety. Unless, apparently, they threatened her cat too.

Torii homed in on her at her words. “You’re sure it was Jonathan Wagner, then?”

Mayu looked down and fiddled with the edge of her camisole. Shikamaru took in the goosebumps on her arms and removed his zip-up sweater before settling it over her shoulders.

“You’ll get blood on it,” she protested and he pressed his lips together. She sighed but didn’t protest further.

The EMT gently pulled the shoulder down to look more closely at her arm. “Stitches?” Mayu asked, looking down at her cut with interest and lifting a finger to poke at it.

Torii smacked it away and glared and she stuck out her lower lip. The EMT ignored them in favor of rummaging through his bag. “I don’t think so. Just needs to be cleaned. A butterfly bandage should do it. Any other injuries?”

“Bruises,” Mayu said dismissively. “And the lip.”

“The perp was wearing a mask. There is no way you can claim a positive ID on Wagner,” Sasuke said, eyes darting to her lip and then to the cut on her arm.

“It was him,” Mayu said with a slight lisp as she talked past her swollen lower lip. “I would know him anywhere.”

Shikamaru had dropped his arm to her waist so that the poor EMT would have at least some room to work and he gave it a small squeeze.

“I believe you,” Fugaku said before Sasuke could cut in. “But a jury or judge won’t. I’ll still bring him in for questioning, though. I'm sure he'll slip up in interrogation.”

“Well,” Mayu said and Shikamaru’s eyes narrowed when her expression went self-satisfied. “I can tell you for sure that you’re looking for somebody that’s male, Caucasian, 6’2”, 220 pounds, brown eyes, size eleven feet. He’ll also have a hell of a shiner on the left side of his face, possibly even fractures to his cheekbone, three broken fingers on his right hand, cracked or broken ribs on his left side, burns on his left hip and thigh and a jacked knee. Um, on the right.”

Shikamaru stared at her, jumping when a low whistle sounded behind him. Ensui sidled up next to him. “Damn. You did all that in the ninety seconds it took Sasuke to get to you?”

Mayu sniffed and put her nose in the air. “I told all of you that you were being ridiculous with the panicking and the security. I can take care of myself.”

“I see that,” Ensui said with a sharp smile that never meant good things for those involved.

Fugaku was looking at her with what Shikamaru was fairly certain was pride and Torii was staring up into the tree branches in his patented ‘I’m surrounded by idiots’ pose. Dai was already relaying the information to dispatch to get an APB out on somebody fitting Mayu’s description of her attacker.

Shikamaru was torn between awe and annoyance. He believed her - she  _could_  take care of herself. Mayu was tough, anyone could see that. But... “When you’ve got people who love you, the point is that you don’t have to do it alone.”

Ensui raised an eyebrow at his blurted words and his whole face heated when every eye turned to him. Even the EMT was looking interested in the answer when Mayu squeaked out, “Love?”

“I really hope your kids can break the cycle of Nara men’s lack of game,” Ensui said.

Shikamaru glared at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be cat hunting?”

Ensui scoffed. “Please. Your mother has some sort of Cat in Need beacon. She’ll find Beaker in -”

“Found him!” Yoshino’s victorious cry echoed across the lawn.

Mayu leaned back to peer around Shikamaru and gasped. “Beaker!”

The EMT sighed when she avoided the swab he’d been trying to dab on her lip and took off across the grass. Shikamaru stuffed his hands in his pockets, stomach sinking, and followed at a slower pace.

“Don’t look so glum, kid.” Shikamaru jumped.

Ensui had always been able to creep up on him. He ignored Shikamaru’s annoyed gaze, instead quirking his lip up when Mayu took a bedraggled beaker from Yoshino and hugged him to her chest. “She’s crazy about you. You’ll just have to be patient.”

Shikamaru nodded once, slowly. Patience was something he’d need in spades if he wanted to be with Mayu. As Beaker leaned back and somehow managed to simultaneously make loud plaintive noises while licking her nose, he relaxed. He could be patient.

“Thank you so much, Yoshino,” Mayu was saying while his mother gave her half a hug.

Shikaku was standing to the side of his wife, but his eyes weren’t on Mayu. Instead, they were narrowed and looking at something off to the side. Shikamaru turned to follow his gaze and pressed his lips together when he saw Fugaku talking to a defiant-looking Bryant on the edge of the lawn.

Before he could stop himself, Shikamaru was spinning on his heels and marching towards the man. Mayu made a noise of protestation and Shikamaru glanced over and saw that his father had broken away from them to go over there, as well. Yoshino, Temari, and Mayu hurried after him.

“...You’ll be put on paid suspension pending an investigation into your conduct,” Shikamaru heard Fugaku say as he got closer. He held out his hand. “Your badge and gun, please.”

“You’re going to do this here, in front of everybody?” Bryant blustered.

“Your conduct should be humiliation enough, I don’t see how this could possibly be any worse for you. Now. Your badge and gun.”

Bryant’s face turned an ugly purple color and he removed his badge from his belt with jerky motions and slapped it onto Fugaku’s hand. Next, he unbuckled his gun, unloading it with a few angry motions, and handed the clip and gun to Fugaku.

“This is bullshit. The girl is a fucking annoyance, you said it yourself, it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to do something about it. Hell, who can blame the guy -”

Shikamaru sped up, determined to shut him up once and for all. Shikaku made it there first. He crossed the space between them in two long strides, pulled his fist back, and slammed it into Bryant’s jaw. Shikamaru stopped and gaped. His father stood, feet apart, hair messy, in a pair of old jeans and a sweatshirt, but still somehow managed to look powerful and fucking terrifying.

“Oh, my,” Yoshino said and Shikamaru closed his eyes briefly.

“Really, mom? That’s where you’re going right now?”

“I can’t help it! He’s very sexy when he loses his temper.”

“Your husband’s a total hunk, Yoshino,” Mayu said matter-of-factly.

Shikamaru glanced over at her. His sweater was still pulled off one slender shoulder to reveal her bandage, there was blood on her chin, and a now-sleeping Beaker nestled in her arms. Her expression was twisted into what Shikamaru was now starting to recognize as her confused expression, which only seemed to make an appearance when Feelings were involved. He realized with a painful jolt that she didn’t understand why Shikaku had punched Bryant. That he'd done it on behalf of her.

Temari had sidled up next to her and was nodding along. “Yep. You totally lucked out, Yoshino.”

Bryant had struggled to his feet and was being held back from retaliation by two grim-faced uniformed officers. “You can’t do that! I’m a cop! You’ll go to jail for this -”

Shikaku yawned and shook out his hand. “I just saw you turn over your badge and gun. If you want to press charges, be my guest. I’m sure it’ll do wonders for your upcoming investigation.”

Bryant paused at that. Shikamaru’s lips quirked up on one side. He knew what the look on his father’s face meant. Bryant’s life as he knew it was over. He doubted he’d be able to get a job as a janitor in this town after this. Judging by his expression, he knew it, too.

Shikaku turned and gave Yoshino a boyish half-smile that had all three of the women sighing in unison.

“If you’re done swooning over my father,” Shikamaru grumbled and Mayu turned towards him.

“Well, in my defense, I still think you’re cuter,” she said solemnly.

Ensui snorted, but Shikamaru couldn’t stop his smile or the warmth in his chest. “Come here, let me say hi to Beaker.”

All of them gathered around the cat, who began purring in earnest at all the attention. “He hates staying in hotels,” Mayu said with a sigh. “He’s going to be a disaster.”

“Why would he need to stay in a hotel?” Temari asked.

“We can help you clean up your place,” Ensui offered and Mayu grimaced.

“Well, when we fought...some of my experiments ended up all over the floor. It’s probably not safe to let him run around in it until it gets cleaned up by a specialized crew. Especially with the broken glass.” Her eyes widened. “Crap, I should tell Fugaku before he sends his team up to look around.”

Shikamaru found himself with an armful of languid feline, watching as she hurried over to Fugaku. He’d just caught a glimpse of her bruised and bloodied knuckles and he’d had to force down the urge to drag her back over to the EMTs. His parents were exchanging a Meaningful Couple Look in the blue and red lights reflecting off of everything and Temari had sidled up next to him to scratch under Beaker’s chin.

“Your girlfriend is a handful,” she said neutrally and he eyed her.

“It’s not her fault some guy is stalking her.” He was proud of how calm his voice sounded, but Temari knew him too well not to hear the underlying warning.

“I didn’t say it was. She’s tough. I can respect that. She kind of reminds me of your mom that way. I guess Nara men really do have a type.”

Shikamaru wasn’t sure what to make of that, so didn’t reply. Temari seemed...resigned, but not unhappy.

“You’ll always be my partner, you know,” he said, keeping his voice low so his parents, who had stepped to the side and were now talking to Ensui about security measures, wouldn’t hear.

“In ice skating,” Temari said flatly.

“Yes. You’ll always be my friend, too.”

Temari smiled up at him at that. “I know. Me, too.”

They didn’t talk anymore about it. They didn’t have to. Shikamaru understood that Temari would support his relationship and she understood that he was resolute in his decision to pursue it.

Shikamaru sat next to Mayu at the end of the ambulance as the EMT, whose name was Roger, cleaned and bandaged some cuts on her feet that she had finally admitted to. Or possibly had just noticed. Torii was taking her statement and she leaned against Shikamaru as she gave it. He was grateful for her heat at his side, as he still had not fully recovered from the shock of her being attacked.

“I was working on one of my projects at the kitchen table, which is ruined now, thanks to that pathetic excuse for a human being. At around two in the morning, something started slamming against the door. I forgot what a big guy Wagner is,” she said, then winced when Roger did something to her foot.

Shikamaru squeezed her now-bandaged hand and she smiled up at him. Beaker was sprawled across both their laps, laying on his back with his paws up in the air, fast asleep. Yoshino, Fugaku, Ensui, Shikaku, Eiji, and Temari were crowded around them. Torii had threatened to have them all removed if they interrupted. They believed him and so far had kept their mouths shut.

“It took him four hits to bust it in. By then, I was ready for him - I’d picked up a bat I use for, uh, playing baseball.”

Torii raised an eyebrow, probably knowing the bat had nothing to do with baseball, but since it was illegal to just keep a bat for weapon purposes, Shikamaru doubted he’d comment.

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Uh, because I knew that Ensui’s system would do it for me?” Mayu rolled her eyes and Shikamaru didn’t miss the smile Shikaku hid behind his slightly-swollen hand at her attitude.

Oh, god, Mayu really was like his mother. His father's fondness of her was proof. “Anyway, he busted in and came to a stop by the kitchen table. He was dressed all in black, like I said, with a ski mask on.”

Mayu repeated her full description from earlier before continuing. “I hit him in the ribs with the bat. He grabbed it and pulled me closer, then slammed me into the table.”

Yoshino gasped and Shikamaru took a deep breath. Mayu shrugged, looking uncomfortable at their reactions. “It was cheap, so it broke. I think that’s where I got the cuts - from broken glass. He was screaming at me. Saying it was my fault, I ruined his life, blah blah blah.”

“Did you recognize his voice?” Torii asked.

“Yeah. It was Wagner. Prison sure didn’t do much for his mental health, huh?”

“No, apparently not,” Torii’s hand tightened on the pen and he took a deep breath. “Okay, so what happened next?”

“Well, we fought. He wasn’t expecting me to be able to defend myself this time.” Her eyes lit with triumph. “He got in one punch - that’s where the split lip came from. But I totally kicked his ass!” she crowed. “By the time Sasuke showed up he was crying. Loser. I didn’t cry when he  _stabbed_ me.”

She blinked when a series of choked noises sounded from her audience. Torii sighed and Sasuke had put two fingers to his forehead. “What? That was years ago! See?”

She pulled her hoodie aside to reveal her scar. They all leaned forward to look at it, except Yoshino, who had seen it while they were training.

“I’m going to go talk to Fugaku,” Shikaku said in a clipped tone, then spun on his heel and stalked off.

“I’m coming, too,” Ensui growled.

Mayu stared after them, then shot a confused look at Shikamaru. “Was that...not good?”

He leaned forward and kissed the side of her mouth, careful to avoid where it was split. “They just don’t like the fact that somebody hurt you. Twice.”

Her brow furrowed. “But...”

“No buts,” Yoshino cut in. “Now. Fugaku said your apartment is sealed until they can get somebody in to deal with the chemicals.”

Mayu’s eyes darted to the side and she gave a nervous laugh. “Uh, well...I just need to go in for a second before the cleaners get there. Don’t worry! It should be fine.”

Torii dropped his head in defeat. “You have chemicals you’re not supposed to again, don’t you?”

“What? No, of course not! I promised Fugaku I wouldn’t -”

“Where are they?”

“Upper right cabinet, purple art box,” she said promptly, then beamed at Torii when he turned and jogged towards the apartment.

Shikamaru stared at her. He was stuck somewhere between intense fondness and disbelief.

“You can’t keep illegal things in the house when you move in with us,” Yoshino said brusquely, cutting in before Shikamaru could declare his love for her a second time. “But maybe we can get you a storage unit for that type of stuff.”

Mayu blinked rapidly. “Uh, what?”

“Well, your apartment is trashed, right? You spend most of your time at our house, anyway.”

“But - but Beaker!”

“We have five cats, one more won’t make a difference.” Shikamaru was fairly certain Shikaku might have Thoughts on that but kept his mouth shut.

“I’m not - I don’t want to intrude -”

“You’re not,” Shikamaru said and she turned to him. He lifted his hand and ran a thumb across her cheek. “We want you there.”

She studied him with wide eyes. “But. Last night I was...I was kind of a jerk.”

Shikamaru turned to his family and tilted his head in a clear request for privacy. The EMT was packing up his things already, so it only took a few minutes for everyone to clear out.

“You said earlier that Beaker’s all you have,” Shikamaru started, meeting her gaze. “That’s not true. You have me. Yeah, you were a bit of a jerk last night, but I understand why. You felt left out and I know I didn’t help any.”

She looked away and her cheeks turned red and then puffed out in indignation. “I did not feel _left out -”_

He leaned forward and kissed her nose and she cut off. She was staring at him when he pulled back. Her lip had started to scab over and he was already missing the feel of her mouth on his own. Just another reason to hate Jonathan Wagner.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to worry about me leaving. If you want me, I’m here.”

She went to bite her lip, then winced. “I - earlier you said -”

“I meant it.”

The expression on her face was a painful mix of disbelief and hope. “But - but it’s obvious that Temari loves you,” she said in a small voice. “And your family really likes her. And you care for her...you two even have some history,” she said in an accusing tone.

He winced. Figures she’d pick up on that. “Not really. We kissed, once, when we were nineteen. I knew it was a bad idea and said that I didn’t want to date my skating partner. I didn’t realize...”

“That she was waiting for you? Ugh, men are so oblivious,” she grumbled and Shikamaru held back from pointing out that he wasn’t the only oblivious one.

“She won’t cause any problems, you know. Temari’s not like that.”

Mayu shrugged and played with her fingers. “Yeah, she actually seems really great,” she said petulantly and he chuckled and tugged her against him.

“She is, but she isn’t who I want.” He held his breath as Mayu ran her fingers along the seam of his pants on his outer thigh.

“I want you, too. Um. I mean. I guess that I.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and mumbled out the rest in a rush. “I guess that I love you.”

She shoved her face into his shoulder and tensed, probably ready for rejection. He wrapped his arms around her, careful not to press too hard. “I love you, too.”

She melted against him and Beaker made a half-hearted sound of protest when he was squished between them.

“I’m sorry I ran off.”

“I’m sorry I made you feel bad,” he said and she shrugged.

“Not your fault. I’m bad at this, I think.”

“I think you’re doing alright. Come on, let’s get you home before mom implodes.”

As he grabbed Beaker and helped her to her feet, the realization hit that they’d basically proclaimed their love for each other for the first time at a crime scene. At this point, it didn’t even surprise him.

000

“Ugh, Kiba, will you stop? I’m fine!”

Shikamaru lay on his back in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Kiba had burst into his bedroom at nine, all righteous fury and loud exclamations. Mayu had been curled up at his side, Beaker a smug, warm weight between them. They’d only fallen asleep a few hours before. 

Shikamaru had spent a good half an hour running his fingers lightly over every bruise and cut, reassuring himself that she was alive. Then they’d made love, Shikamaru being as gentle as he could. He’d tried to argue that she should rest, but Mayu had been fairly insistent and she was hard to resist. He could tell that she’d needed the reassurance and he was hard-pressed to deny her anything she needed, especially right now.

“Oh, yeah, all those bandages and your swollen lip are totally reassuring.”

Mayu slapped at his hands as Kiba tugged the covers down. The t-shirt she’d put on last night, one of Shikamaru’s, had hiked up, revealing her bruised torso and a pair of underwear she’d had in her gym bag. He grabbed the blanket and tugged it back over her, glaring at Kiba.

“What the fuck, Kiba?”

Kiba ignored him in favor of pointing down at Mayu’s bandaged feet, which had been revealed when Shikamaru pulled the covers up with too much force.

“Kiba, I’m exhausted,” Mayu said. “Can you please just let me sleep?”

Kiba opened his mouth to argue, then caught sight of the expression on Shikamaru’s face. “Fine. We’ll talk about this later.”

He stalked out of the room and Shikamaru adjusted the duvet so that they were both fully covered again. Mayu turned and rested her head on his shoulder, ignoring Beaker’s huff of indignation at the movement. She yawned widely and then winced when it pulled at her scab.

Shikamaru kissed the top of her head, feeling warm and content and exceedingly happy. Mayu was playing with the light amount of hair dusting his chest and he fell back into slumber easily.

When he woke up the bed was empty and his phone told him it was one in the afternoon. He stretched and yawned before sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He pulled on sweats and didn’t bother with a shirt before heading downstairs.

“He tried to see me naked, Tenten -”

“I did not! I was looking for injuries!”

“And he totally creeped on me! He saw my underwear. Shikamaru was very upset.”

“You are such an asshole,” Kiba said as Shikamaru entered the kitchen.

Tenten and Kiba were sitting at the table. Mayu was across from them and Temari was leaning against the counter, drinking a cup of coffee and watching them with an amused expression.

“Kiba, I’m  _traumatized,_ and here you are calling me names -”

Tenten laughed as Kiba leaned over and put his forehead on the table. “That’s the last time I rush over to make sure you’re okay. What was up with that text you sent, anyway?”

“What? You always get mad when I don’t tell you things. I thought you’d be happy.”

 _“Was attacked by ex-stalker, am fine, Shikamaru loves me!_ Is not the way I would have chosen to be told!”

“What, you wanted me to _call_  you to tell you that Shikamaru loves me? What are you, a fourteen-year-old girl? You want to exchange friendship bracelets, too?”

Shikamaru wandered over to Temari and accepted the mug she’d been holding, taking a sip of coffee and leaning against the counter. Kiba made a strangled, frustrated noise.

“First of all, Shikamaru’s been in love with you since you mistook him for a homeless person the first time you saw him. Any idiot could tell he was smitten, I didn’t need an announcement.” Shikamaru slumped over his cup and ignored Temari’s raised eyebrow. “Second of all, I’m talking about the ‘attacked by an ex-stalker’ portion of yesterday’s events.”

Shikamaru could see that he was winding down, so sauntered over to sit next to Mayu, who brightened at his presence. Temari was rifling around the cupboards for another mug for coffee. “Shikamaru! Tell Kiba that I was too traumatized by the disappearance of Beaker to properly break the news.” She flopped against him and he noted with satisfaction that she was still in his shirt and was wearing a pair of his sweats.

He kissed her cheek and pushed her tangled hair behind her ear. “Leave her alone, Kiba.”

“But -”

Shikamaru glared at him and he sighed and slumped back when Tenten patted his shoulder. “Fine.” He grinned after a moment of thought. “Don’t worry, I figured you were too ‘traumatized’ to let Hinata know, so I sent her a text updating her on the situation and gave her Shikamaru’s address. She’s driving back from her dad’s country house as we speak.”

Mayu gasped. “You monster! You know Hinata’s fussing is the worst -”

The doorbell rang. Mayu squeaked and jumped to her feet, then winced. “Ow. Those cuts are tender,” she muttered.

Shikamaru tugged her back onto the chair as Temari moved to answer the door. “We should take you to the doctor.”

“Yoshino said one is stopping by later. I can’t believe you have a doctor that does house calls. Ridiculous.” Mayu stuck her lower lip out.

“Seems like something that will come in handy if  _you’re_ going to live here,” Kiba said.

Temari reentered the kitchen and Shikamaru took in the dark-haired woman with wide, strangely light-colored eyes as she scurried around her and ran to Mayu’s side. A Hyuuga, then - Mayu hadn't mentioned that when they talked about her.

“Hinata, you didn’t have to come,” Mayu muttered, but Shikamaru noticed the way she relaxed almost immediately upon her best friend’s arrival.

He hadn’t met Hinata yet since she’d left with her family when the semester ended to spend a few months at their lake house outside the city. All Shikamaru knew from his conversations with Mayu was that she was ‘basically a saint,’ and had been Mayu’s best friend for two years. She worked part-time as an EMT and was attending the pre-med program at the University.

“Mayu, are you okay?” She leaned over and hugged her and Mayu wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

“Yeah. It was - it was kinda sucky,” she said and her smile was watery when Hinata pulled back to look at her face. “Beaker ran away, but Yoshino found him.”

Hinata bit her lip as she studied Mayu. “Kiba said you fought him off. Are you hurt anywhere other than your lip?”

“I have a few cuts on the bottom of my feet, which sucks since I’m supposed to be skating a million hours every day.” Mayu sighed. “And a small cut on my arm.”

“Don’t forget the bruises on your torso,” Kiba grumbled.

“Which you only saw because you’re a _pervert -”_

“Do not start that up again, you two,” Tenten said and they both went immediately silent. Shikamaru sent her a look of profound respect.

Hinata kneeled down and pulled one of Mayu’s feet into her lap, ignoring her protests as she unwrapped the bandages. “Hinata, come on, it’s fine, stand up -”

“Just let her look at it, Mayu, it’s not like she hasn’t stitched you up before,” Kiba said loudly over her protests.

“Wait, isn’t she just a student?” Shikamaru asked faintly and Mayu leaned back against his shoulder and smiled up at him.

He smiled back before he could stop himself and quickly turned it into a scowl. “No, you don’t get to cute your way out of this -”

“Mayu! You can’t skate on these,” Hinata said.

“Sure I can. We’ll just wrap them extra tight -”

“You’re not going to mess your feet up because you’re trying to impress your boyfriend -”

“Kiba, you’re being an overbearing asshole -”

“What in the world is going on in here?” They all stopped talking over one another and turned slowly towards the door.

Yoshino stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the chaos of the kitchen. Hinata was kneeling on the floor with Mayu’s foot clasped lightly between two hands, bandages spread out around her. Kiba had climbed halfway over the table and was craning to see the appendage, a feat made more difficult by Mayu’s palm pushed up against his cheek, trying to force him away.

Tenten had put her fingers to her temple and looked ready to start yelling and Shikamaru had his arms wrapped around Mayu and was trying to gently pry her off Kiba. Temari was watching it all with a gobsmacked expression on her face.

“Uh, hey Yoshino. This is my friend Hinata Hyuuga. She stopped by to check on me. Um, she’s a pre-med student.”

Kiba scrambled to get back into his chair and Tenten sent Yoshino an apologetic look. Shikamaru had a feeling she had to use that expression a lot, since she was dating Kiba. Then he realized that he should probably start practicing it as he glanced down at his girlfriend, who was doing her best to look innocent and pitiful.

“It’s nice to meet you, Hinata. But how about we let the licensed doctor I brought with me take a look, huh?”

Hinata turned bright red and stuttered out an apology. She stood and backed away and Mayu narrowed her eyes at Yoshino. “Hinata’s a genius, you know. She’s patched me up _loads_ of times.”

Shikamaru couldn’t quite stop the distressed noise he made and glared at Temari when she snickered into her coffee cup. Yoshino took a deep breath.

“I’m sure she’s very good, Mayu. I didn’t mean any disrespect. I’m sorry, Hinata.”

“Oh! No, it’s fine. I’m glad you’ve brought an experienced doctor to look at her,” she said earnestly. “I’d prefer she always went to the hospital, but...” she trailed off and Shikamaru looked up at the ceiling, wondering when his life had lost the plot.

“Well, now she will,” Yoshino said and Shikamaru gaped when the head surgeon of the hospital stepped into the room.

“Alright, where’s my patient?” Tsunade snapped.

“Um,” Mayu said, staring up at the woman with wide eyes.

“Did she hit her head, too? I’m not doing this in the kitchen. Yoshino, get me some sake.”

Hinata was watching her with what Shikamaru realized was awe. She jumped when Tsunade pointed at her. “You! You’ll assist me since you’re so gung-ho.”

“Y-yes Chief Senju!”

An hour later Mayu was rebandaged and vertical on the couch, arms crossed over her chest as she glared at Tsunade. “Oh, stop your sulking. I said you could skate again in four days.”

“But we have to practice! Regionals are in _two weeks -”_

“And you’re no good to us if you’re too injured to skate when they come,” Yoshino said for the sixth time.

Tsunade turned to Hinata and narrowed her eyes at her. “You’re not completely useless. Here’s my card. If you need a reference for med school, I’ll write you one.”

Hinata’s eyes went impossibly wide. Shikamaru didn’t blame her - a reference from Tsunade Senju would go a long ways towards getting her into just about any program. “Y-yes Chief Senju! Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Tsunade snorted and swayed on her feet from all the sake she’d drunk. “Please, it’s worth it just to piss that father of yours off. I know he’s probably being a pain in the ass over you not following in the family line or whatever.” She pointed at her and narrowed one eye, which made her look even drunker. “Don’t you let him change your mind. You’ve got a bright future!”

Hinata looked like she could be knocked over with a feather. Shikamaru leaned his head back against the couch from his spot on the floor and turned to look at Mayu when she ran her fingers down his cheek. They stared at each other for a few long moments before Yoshino broke the silence with a clap of her hands.

“Alright. I’m going to go rearrange our training schedule. It’s going to be intense once Mayu’s ready to skate again,” she said with what Shikamaru thought was an unholy amount of glee before leaving the room.

Shikamaru did  _not_ whimper.

000

Mayu didn’t seem to be having any trouble with their routine, despite the barely-healed cuts on her feet. She landed perfectly next to Shikamaru after their double axel and spread her arms out as they raced across the ice, legs working to build speed, world rushing past them.

Their heads dipped low and their right feet came up straight behind them and they spun in tandem, bodies held in perfect poses. Then both feet were on the ice again and they were dancing across the surface, feet moving in a complex pattern. Mayu turned and he was there to propel her into the air and catch her when she came back down.

They moved into the death spiral. It felt right - they’d spent two days practicing this move, though this was the first time they’d done it as part of the whole routine. He let go of her with one hand and moved to grab onto her with the other in a basic hand switch.

His eyes widened when her posture wobbled and his grip slipped. In his attempt to grasp onto her he lost his balance and both of them went flying in opposite directions. The hard ice smacking into his body was familiar and painful and he came to a stop ten feet from where he’d started. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring his new bruises, and skated over to Mayu, who was sprawled out and glaring at the ceiling.

“Sorry,” she said when he stopped next to her. “Are you okay?”

He knelt down and brushed his thumb across her lip, which only held a bit of discoloration from the attack. “Yeah, are you okay? I saw you wince - it is your rib again?”

One of her ribs had been deeply bruised and was still giving her some trouble, even nine days later. Yoshino and Temari skated up just in time to hear his question. Mayu accepted the hand Temari held out to her and stood.

“Yeah, it twinged a bit. Dammit. It’s taking forever to heal.”

Yoshino frowned. “Ribs are tricky. Let’s make sure to wrap it every day, alright?”

“Maybe we should skip regionals,” Shikamaru blurted and was met with three scandalized expressions. “It’s hurting her to practice.”

Temari rolled her eyes in tandem with Mayu and he twitched. Despite everything, they were getting along annoyingly well. When he’d asked Mayu about it, she’d just shrugged and said, “It’s not like I can blame her for recognizing that you’re a superior specimen.” Like many things that came out of her mouth, it made him feel warm and disturbed all at once.

“Please, figure skating _always_ hurts, Shikamaru. Tsunade said she could skate and Mayu wants to do it. Don’t be a caveman,” Temari scolded.

“I raised you better than that,” Yoshino added and Shikamaru gaped at them as they all skated away in a cloud of feminine fury.

He ignored Sasuke’s smirk when he glided over to where he was perched on the wall next to the ice. To Mayu’s consternation, Ensui had placed bodyguards on her during the day and had taken to sleeping down the hall with Eiji at night.

Jonathan Wagner was in the wind. Fugaku’s team had discovered that he had gone to his father’s personal physician the night of the attack and after a subpoena, the doctor released his list of injuries. An exact match to the description Mayu had provided. Then he’d stolen a hundred grand in cash from his father and gone dark. Mayu had been annoyingly blasé about it, but then she wasn’t living alone in her apartment, anymore. Shikamaru knew that between Fugaku and Ensui, they’d find the man eventually.

“Any news on Wagner?”

Sasuke shrugged and turned a page in the gun catalog he’d been studying for the past hour and a half. “Ensui might have a few leads. We’re looking into it.”

 _We_ was his team of three. A blonde, excitable man named Naruto and a woman with bright pink hair named Sakura who looked like she was ready, willing, and able to punch through anybody in her way. Mayu got along with her new team of bodyguards alarmingly well. They’d given Shikamaru a heart attack the day before when he’d entered the gym to the sight of Mayu flying through the air in the midst of a sparring session with Naruto.

Yoshino had put the kibosh on any further spars until after regionals after that, much to Mayu’s distress. Ensui had also started not-so-subtly trying to convince Mayu that the private sector would be much more fun than working on Fugaku’s team.

Sasuke had simply snorted and given his boss a deadpan look when he’d overheard one such conversation. “If your name isn’t Fugaku, she’s not interested in a job offer. She’s been following my dad around for years ‘helping’ him solve cases. Honestly, it’s kept his mind off the fact that you stole me out from under his thumb, so I wouldn’t push it. My dad can get nasty when crossed.”

Ensui had actually looked a little worried about that and the attempts at recruiting had ended. Shikamaru’s whole family was full of idiots with high IQs - he could have told Ensui that Fugaku would rip his head off if he caught him trying to poach Mayu.

He glanced across the ice and watched in interest as Mayu took off her thermal top so that she was only in her sports bra. He then looked at the clock. Two more hours. Then they could go soak in the tub.

“Whatever you’re thinking, I don’t want to know,” Sasuke grumbled and Shikamaru ignored him in favor of watching as Temari and Yoshino wrapped her ribs.

A few minutes later they were out on the ice again and Yoshino was instructing them to skip the death spiral. Mayu huffed but didn’t argue and they made it through the routine twice more without issue.

“Alright. We’ve got four days,” Yoshino said, tapping the clipboard against her thigh. “Maybe we should ditch the spiral...”

“No! I can do it,” Mayu interjected. “I just need a day. We’ll wrap my ribs, it’ll be fine. Please, Yoshino, if we don’t do it, there’s no way we’ll place.”

Shikamaru pressed his lips together but didn’t say anything. The last thing he wanted was to be glared down by three women again. Yoshino studied her, then sighed. “If we want to change the routine, we have to do it now,” she warned.

“No way, we’re not going out there and doing a substandard routine. Shikamaru’s reputation is at stake,” Mayu said hotly and he looked up at the ceiling and pretended they weren’t talking about him as if he weren’t there when the three of them fell into a discussion about his image.

He was beyond cranky by the time they dropped their stuff on his bedroom floor, and he stalked into his bathroom without looking at Mayu. He turned on the tub and took his shirt off with jerky movements.

“Shikamaru? Is - is everything okay?” He didn’t look over at her, even though the hesitant quality of her voice almost had him giving in. Almost.

“Does it matter?”

“I - yes?” He glanced over at her. Her brows were furrowed and she was looking at him like he’d grown a second head that had started wailing Alan Jackson songs. Beaker was twining around her legs, oblivious to the drama.

He pushed his pants off and walked down into the jacuzzi. Mayu took a few more steps into the bathroom. “Why would you think it doesn’t matter?”

“Well according to you, my mother, and Temari I have no say in our routine and any worry I show for you is me being a sexist pig.” He leaned back against the tub wall, too tense to truly get comfortable. Mayu was silent for a long moment.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I just - I don’t want to embarrass you.”

Shikamaru turned and looked at her. She was staring down at her socks and looked so mournful that he found it impossible to stay angry. “You won’t embarrass me. I just - my mom and Temari are always ganging up on me, treating me like I’m a kid who can’t take care of himself. I don’t want my girlfriend to do the same thing.”

Mayu looked up. “I wasn’t trying to boss you around. I just don’t want to mess everything up because of my stupid past.”

The last of his annoyance faded and he sighed. “You have to know I don’t want you to hurt yourself for me.”

“I know that! I mean...I want to win, too. I really do. And then I want you and Temari to move on and get the gold medal at nationals and worlds.” She looked so determined that his mouth quirked up. 

“Alright, alright. We’ll do the death spiral. You can make up for being snooty by getting in here with me.”

She brightened and he watched as she got out of her clothing and unwound the wrap on her ribs in record time. The water sloshed as she moved to straddle him and he put his hands on her hips and tugged her closer when she leaned down and kissed him.

He made a sound of encouragement when she took his hair out of its ponytail and pushed her fingers into it. She was moving her body against his languidly and the feeling of her wet skin on his own sent heat coursing through him.

Mayu pulled back and moved her lips to his ear. “I got the results from my physical back. All clear.” She bit down lightly on his lobe and he arched up, moaning when she pushed down against him.

“Oh - oh yeah?” He’d received a clean bill of health a few days ago and she’d already assured him that she was on birth control. “You wanna without...?”

She leaned back, which put her full weight in his lap, sending little spirals of pleasure up his spine. “Yeah. If that’s - if you’re comfortable with it.”

Shikamaru studied her. He’d never had sex without a condom before, but then he’d also never dated somebody for longer than a few weeks, or with the intent to stay with them. “Yeah. I’m good.”

Mayu only hesitated for a moment before lifting herself and grasping his erection in one hand. His eyes fluttered shut as she lowered herself down on him. Sex without a condom, it turned out, was intense, and he had to grip the sides of the tub to stop himself from grabbing her hips and pounding up into her.

“I can feel your skin,” she whispered as she sat down all the way and fluttered around him. “You’re so warm.”

He opened his eyes and took in her red cheeks and parted lips. His hand came up almost of its own volition to tangle into her hair and pull her closer to him so that he could kiss her. His tongue entered her mouth and she started to move above him. Shikamaru brought his free hand to her breast and thrust upward to meet her as she came down.

All the muscles in his abdomen tightened. Without a layer of latex between them he could feel every movement of her around him and he broke their kiss and leaned his head all the way back, moaning low in his throat as she picked up her pace. Her tongue ran up his throat and his hands went to her hips, tugging her down against him, sending water sloshing out over the edge of the jacuzzi with the abrupt movement. She said his name in a low, breathy voice and he did it again while thrusting up into her.

“Fuck, that’s good. I’m going to want to be inside you all the time now, baby,” he said and she laughed.

“Don’t - don’t you already?”

He leaned forward and bit lightly into the side of her throat to hide the noises that wanted to escape him as she moved over him. She twisted her hand in his hair and tightened her grip almost painfully as she came.

By the time he followed her over the edge, there was water all over the floor and he was fairly certain that if anybody was upstairs they would have heard at least some of the noises he’d made. Mayu may be fairly quiet during sex, but he was not.

A knock sounded on his bedroom door and Ensui’s voice filtered into the bathroom. “If you two are done traumatizing Shikamaru’s parents, get dressed. We’re going out for dinner.”

“No,” Mayu moaned and hid her face in his neck. “I told you to be quiet.

He sighed. “We need our own place.”

She went still on top of him and his eyes widened when he realized what he’d said. Apparently, he had no control over his mouth when he was with her. He met her gaze squarely despite his embarrassment when she sat back.

“You want to get a place together? Like, permanently?”

Shikamaru shrugged, then reached up and wrapped a wet curl around his finger. “We spend every night together, anyway.”

“We’ve barely been together two months. Isn’t that...a little fast?”

He looked down, then regretted it when he became distracted by her bare chest. Her breasts were perfectly round and bouncy and somehow perky despite their size. They were difficult to ignore when they were right there.

“Focus, Shikamaru,” she said and he looked back up at her face, sheepish, but she was smiling.

“If you’re not ready, that’s fine.”

“But you’re ready,” Mayu said and tilted her head to the side.

He smiled up at her. “I’ve been ready since you crashed the skating auditions.”

“I keep telling you and your family, I did not _crash_ them, I was there with Kiba, who you invited, by the way!”

His smile morphed into a full-fledged grin and she stuck her lip out. “Better stop that,” he said in a low, husky tone. “Or we’ll miss dinner.”

“You damn well better not, I’m hungry,” Ensui called through the door and Shikamaru put a hand over his eyes as Mayu squeaked and scrambled off of him.

The discussion was put off in favor of rushing through a shower and getting ready for dinner. Shikamaru didn’t miss that she hadn’t answered him, though. That was okay, he could wait.

000

“Shikamaru! Did you pack extra thermals?”

“Yes, mother. I have a million thermals.”

“Mayu! The ice packs for your ribs -”

“Got it, Yoshino.”

Shikamaru hauled his suitcase down the stairs. Their flight wasn’t due to leave until the day after tomorrow, but Yoshino was a firm believer that the day before leaving for a competition should be all relaxation. Something about mental energy. Shikamaru planned on spending it in bed with Mayu, something he’d been fantasizing about for weeks since their training schedule took up so much time.

“Dammit. I’m out of icy hot. Shikamaru, will you run to the store to get some, please?” Yoshino’s voice called from the kitchen.

He groaned but knew better than to argue beyond that and swiped the keys from the dish. “Mayu, sweetheart, do you need anything?”

Her head appeared from around the corner at the top of the stairs. A grey bandana was holding the locks of hair that had escaped her short ponytail back from her face. “Um. Some makeup removing wipes? I’m all out. I’ll text you the brand I use.”

“Alright. Let me know if you think of anything else.”

He ignored his father’s smirk as he edged past him in the hallway and stepped out into the cool night air. It was a little after eight and all in all, Shikamaru was feeling good about their chances as he drove down the country road that led into the more populated areas of Konoha. He was fairly certain he and Mayu would place and her ribs seemed to not be bothering her as much after having a day to rest.

He took his time at the drugstore, making a stop in the candy aisle to buy Temari, Yoshino, and Mayu their favorites. He was well aware of how to buy his way into the women in his life’s good graces. His mother had texted him three extra items and Mayu had demanded lube along with the wipes in her own text, which could only mean good things for him. He checked out and was loading the bags into the back of his Lexus, humming to himself, when pain exploded in the back of his skull.

The world tilted and his vision blacked out for a few seconds. When it cleared he was on the ground, blinking at two sets of boots.

 _“This_ is her boyfriend? I honestly expected more of a fight,” a condescending voice said and Shikamaru raised his eyes.

Sneering down at him was Jonathan Wagner. He looked rougher than in the photos Shikamaru had seen of him. In those, his blonde hair had shone and been styled into a perfect coiffe. His blue eyes had held the kind of arrogance you only got from being a spoiled, rich, white male whose father was a legislator.

Now there were bags under his eyes, his hair was falling in ragged hunks around his face, and there was only hatred on his face. His hand was in a cast and the other arm was held against his chest in a sling. He was favoring his right leg, too - all remnants from his fight against Mayu.

Shikamaru took only a moment to fully understand his situation. He was in the back of a dark parking lot, surrounded by Jonathan Wagner and two rough-looking men. Rage moved through him, not at Wagner’s mocking words, but at the memory of Mayu’s split lip and the way she’d cried when she couldn’t find her cat.

Shikamaru was an athlete - his body was well-honed and his reflexes were faster than most. His uncle and father were both ex-military - blackops - and they’d taught him a few tricks growing up. He wasn’t an easy target. He struck out with one foot, connecting solidly with Wagner’s already-injured knee.

He probably should have gone for the two hired men first, but he already knew he couldn’t take all of them on and his main goal was to cause Wagner as much pain as possible before he went down. The man let out a high-pitched squeal and Shikamaru grinned as he rolled up to his feet.

His head throbbed, but he wasn’t dizzy - probably not a concussion, then. He punched Wagner in the face twice before the two men jumped him. He grunted as one nailed him in the ribs with a large fist and Shikamaru put his elbow into his nose in retaliation, which broke with a satisfying crunch.

He stomped on the instep of the other one’s foot and he made a low sound of pain but didn’t loosen the grip he had on Shikamaru’s arm. Wagner had a hand over his mouth, which was dripping blood steadily, and was telling his men to hurry the fuck up.

Shikamaru got in a few more good hits before they managed to toss him into the back of a black van with tinted windows reinforced with wire mesh. The door slammed shut before he managed to gain his balance and dive for it. The sound of somebody shouting could be heard across the parking lot - a witness, that was good - and then people were climbing into the front of the van, which was blocked from his view by a divider, and the whole vehicle rocked as they slammed their doors.

Shikamaru was knocked off balance where he was kneeling, attempting to find a handle to try and open the door, when it rocketed forward. He rolled across the floor and slammed into the back wall. Ouch.

After a few minutes of trying not to tumble all over the place, the pace evened out. It sounded like they were on a highway now. Shikamaru felt in his pockets for his phone, but it was gone. They must have taken it while he was fighting with them. He felt along the inside of the cargo area but couldn’t find any latches or possible weak points.

He stopped fumbling around when he heard the three men up front begin talking. The words were muffled through the divider, but he could still make them out.

“Fuck, yeah, man, I can’t believe we just kidnapped Shikaku Nara’s son! Piece of shit politicians.” Shikamaru rolled his eyes at the sound of him spitting.

His father was much, much more than a politician. These idiots weren’t going to like it when he and Ensui joined forces to retrieve Shikamaru.

“Right? We’re gonna make so much money off this. I didn’t expect an ice skating twink to hit so hard, though,” the other said.

“That cocksucker fucked up my knee and split my lip,” Wagner’s voice cut in and Shikamaru let a slow smile spread across his face. Their jabs didn't bother him. He was a male figure skater, he'd heard it all before. Plus, he didn't think it was an insult to be called gay, probably because he wasn't an asshole like the three men who'd just kidnapped him.

“That girl must be something if you’re willing to go this far to draw her out,” the spitter said and the smile fell off Shikamaru’s face.

Of course, this was about Mayu. Wagner would get her over Shikamaru’s dead body. The van slowed, the sound of traffic around them fading to almost nothing. A few minutes later it stopped completely and somebody got out of the van, slamming the door shut behind him.

Metal grating across pavement echoed through the darkness of his prison and the van moved forward again. A door opening, maybe? It became even darker, the small amount of light that had been coming through the heavily tinted windows disappearing. Shikamaru realized they were inside - a large area, from the way the sounds echoed as the door was pulled shut again. A moment later light was coming back into his windows. They probably switched on the lights.

“Alright. I’m going to call her,” Wagner said and Shikamaru shoved his face up against the window, but could only make out vague figures and the glow of a screen.

“Put it on speaker, I want to hear what she says,” the spitter said and his friend laughed.

Shikamaru tensed when the sound of ringing echoed through what he was fairly certain was an old warehouse. Probably one of Wagner’s father’s - the man was a shipping mogul, among other things. Amateur move. Torii would have a list of his father’s properties in less than an hour.

“Hello?” Shikamaru rested his forehead against the cool glass of the window at the sound of her voice. Fuck.

“Mayu, darling. I have something of yours,” Wagner said and Shikamaru couldn’t help but feel satisfied when he stumbled over the 'M's. A split lip was a bitch.

“Jonathan,” Mayu said coldly. “I suppose I have you to thank for my boyfriend’s disappearance?”

“Aw, darling, don’t be that way,” Jonathan crooned. “I fully intend to give him back only slightly damaged. Provided, of course, you do a few things for me.”

Mayu scoffed. “Please, you can’t actually think you’ll get away with this? Do you have any idea who his family is?”

“His father’s a fucking councilman and his mother is an ex-figure skater. My father’s a  _senator,_ Mayu. Senator trumps councilman every time.”

There was a moment of silence and then Mayu laughed. “Oh, god, you idiot. You really don’t know. Why am I not surprised?”

“You’d better shut your mouth, or maybe I’ll break one of your boyfriend’s legs. See how well he skates after that, huh?”

Shikamaru couldn’t help his wince at the image. Yeah, that would...suck. “What do you want, Jonathan?” Mayu said and Shikamaru’s hands fisted at his sides at the defeat in her tone.

“Tell his daddy that I want three hundred grand, cash, delivered to where I tell you tomorrow. You’ll be the one to deliver it, Mayu, and you’re part of the package. You for him.”

“Mayu, don’t!” Shikamaru yelled.

The van door flew open and Shikamaru squinted in the sudden light as two pairs of hands pulled him out of the van. He kicked out and hit one of them in the leg. He grunted and the other slammed a fist into Shikamaru’s stomach. He gasped as the air left him and couldn’t stop his small sound of pain when spitter said, “Get on your knees!” had slammed an elbow into his back.

“Stop it!” Mayu’s voice was screaming. “Stop it, Wagner, I’ll come, I’ll come - just stop!”

“I’m fine,” Shikamaru wheezed out, heart clenching at the terror in her voice. “Sweetheart, I’m fine -”

His head snapped back when Wagner punched him and he blinked stars out of his vision. The two men dragged him to a pole in the middle of the warehouse, which was empty except for the van.

After a short but brutal struggle, they clicked an honest-to-god manacle around his ankle and yanked his arms behind his back, one on each side of the pole, and tied his wrists together.

“I’ll come, I’ll come, just stop. Stop, Jonathan,” Mayu said again and her voice was ragged and thin.

“Leave him,” Wagner said and Shikamaru glared at him through his hair, which had come out of its ponytail. He looked insufferably self-satisfied.

Shikamaru had heard a sound in the background on Mayu’s side that he was almost certain had been his father. Wagner was dead, he just didn’t know it yet. Dammit, if his face was swollen or his shoulder was jacked right before a competition, Shikamaru would kill Wagner himself.

“Alright. Tomorrow night at eleven beneath the Haro docks. Just you, Mayu, I mean it - bring anybody else and I’ll put a bullet in him before you can sneeze.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll see you then. Just - promise you won’t hurt him anymore?”

Wagner shrugged. “Alright. We won’t rough him up. Much.”

He hung up on her protests and he and his friends spent some time laughing and slapping each other on the back. They had lost interest in Shikamaru now that they couldn't use his distress against Mayu. He realized he was basically a non-entity to Wagner, just something he could use to get to Mayu. Probably for the best.

Shikamaru slid down the pole and sat as they wandered over to the other side of the warehouse. He leaned his head back against the cool metal and tried to find a position that relieved the pressure on his arms.

He didn’t feel like anything was terribly injured, but it certainly wouldn’t be fun skating with all his new bruises. Eh, he’d had worse with some of his tumbles. Once he'd slammed into the wall and went straight over it into a bench. Temari had laughed until she’d cried and he’d had to compete with a hip that was so bruised it was black two days later.

Shikamaru closed his eyes and waited for his family to find him. Between Mayu, Torii, and Ensui, he be free before daybreak.

It took them three hours, give or take. The first indication that he’d been found was a flutter of movement at one of the windows. Shikamaru narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t see a repeat.

The next sign was a little more obvious. The lights went out.

“What the fuck?” The spitter said. As if in reply, the windows exploded inward in a shower of glass, well away from where Shikamaru was sitting. His captors weren’t so lucky and he heard Wagner cursing.

Figures in black flooded inside and Shikamaru curled up as small as he could get when he heard the _pop pop pop_ of tranquilizer guns. Wagner let out another high-pitched scream like the one he’d released in the parking lot after Shikamaru kicked him and then there were more thumps. The men in black were silent. Wagner was not.

“Let me go! You fuckers, I’m the son of a  _senator,_ you can’t do this!”

A man he didn’t recognize knelt down next to him and Shikamaru could just make out the logo of his uncle’s firm on his bulletproof vest. He cut the ropes binding Shikamaru’s wrists together and he winced as he brought them both forward into his lap and attempted to move them to get his circulation going.

“I’ve got a shackle!” The man called. "Find the key!”

“Don’t touch me - what are you - get your hand out of there!” Wagner again.

“Got it,” a familiar voice said and Shikamaru raised his eyebrows when the lights turned back on and his father sauntered over, dressed in the same fatigues and bullet-proof vest as the dozen other people darting around. Yep, his dad was awesome.

He caught sight of Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura across the way, standing over the unconscious figures of the two still-unnamed thugs. The deck of cards they’d been playing poker with the last few hours were fanned around them. Ensui was kneeling over Wagner, saying something in a low tone that had him whimpering and going suddenly silent.

“Hey, dad. You don’t think this was a little overkill?”

Shikaku gave him an unimpressed look as he handed the key to the man who’d cut Shikamaru’s bonds. Then he pulled him into a hug. “That was the worst four hours of my life,” he said gruffly.

Shikamaru hugged him as well as he could with his arms full of pins and needles, shaking out his foot when the shackle came off. “Yeah, well, it was no picnic for me, either,” he grumbled. “How did you find me?”

Shikaku leaned back on his heels and took one of Shikamaru’s arms, rubbing it brusquely to help him regain feeling. “Mayu and Torii. Those two are a damn terrifying team. She knew from the way the sounds echoed that you were in a large space, probably a warehouse.

“Torii tracked down a list of the Senator’s warehouses, though god knows how at that time of night. Mayu hacked into the citywide network of cameras and used some fancy algorithm she’d written when she was _bored,_ apparently, and caught an image of the van in this area. From there it was easy to figure out where they were holding you, according to them.”

“Shikamaru! Let me through, or I swear I will break your nose,” Mayu said to some poor employee of his uncle’s.

Shikamaru struggled to his feet and Shikaku sighed but helped him up. He heard the sound of sirens but ignored it in favor of stepping around the multiple members of Nara Security.

“Let her in, Genma!” Ensui called.

Something in Shikamaru relaxed when he caught sight of Mayu at the door. Her eyes darted around until they landed on him. She looked like hell, but she was still the best thing he’d ever seen. She took off running towards him. He caught a glimpse of his mother and Eiji at the door before Mayu stopped a few inches from him.

She was wringing her hands and her eyes were wet. “He hurt you. I’m so sorry, Shikamaru, he came after you because of me -”

He pulled her into a hug and she sobbed and clutched at his shirt. “I was so scared, I could hear them hurting you -”

“I’m fine, sweetheart, just a bit bruised,” he soothed and she sniffled.

He pushed her back far enough to kiss her. She stiffened only for a second before melting against him. He heard a few catcalls around him but ignored it in favor of making out with his girlfriend. He’d just been kidnapped, he’d earned a few gropes.

“Alright, alright, let’s keep it PG,” Shikaku said, then groaned when Fugaku Uchiha’s voice rang out across the warehouse.

“Just what is going on here?”  Shikamaru flailed and immediately stopped kissing Mayu, who frowned up at him.

“What? It’s just Fugaku.” Said no one else, ever.

He sighed and didn’t bother to explain his sudden terror. She ran her fingers across his cheek and bit her lip. “Is the offer to get an apartment with you still on the table?”

Fugaku made a choking noise, having strode up just in time to catch her question. Shikamaru grinned and she beamed up at him. He wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her more firmly against him. “Always, sweetheart.”

“You can’t move out of the house!”

“Absolutely not.”

Neither one of them listened to the protests around them as he leaned down to kiss her again.

000

Shikamaru barely kept himself from wiping at the thick layer of makeup covering the bruise on his cheek. He’d been lucky - Jonathan Wagner could throw a punch about as well as he could plan a kidnapping. There was no swelling and the discoloration wasn’t that dramatic.

Mayu squeezed his hand as they waited for their turn to go out onto the ice. She was wearing a gauzy dark blue number that clung to her waist and accentuated her generous hips and bust nicely. She had tried it on for Shikamaru the night before and he willed himself not to get a halfie in his tight (yet stretchy) black pants as he remembered the soft noises she’d made while he drove into her from behind while she was still in it.

“Shikamaru! Are the rumors that you’ve finally settled down true? Is Mayu Nomaka your partner off the ice as well as on it?”

Mayu rolled her eyes at the cheesy question but didn’t respond. They’d all agreed that she shouldn’t speak to reporters, not after their first day here.

Mayu deducing that a pair of reporters were sleeping together despite being married to different people (it had been a combination of their clothes, some loose cat hair, and the way they held their microphones that had given it away) had practically been on replay on ESPN all day. Shikamaru thought they had deserved it, honestly - they’d spent ten minutes looking down their noses at her for being an ‘amatuer.’ They'd even hinted that she'd slept her way into the partnership with Shikamaru.

The version that some bystander recorded on his iPhone and then uploaded to YouTube had a hundred thousand views. She’d been dubbed 'Detective Sparkle Princess' in the title, since she’d been wearing a sparkling white number and a small tiara for their short while she snarkily listed off the clues that led to her scandalous conclusion.

Temari had laughed so hard she had to sit down when she saw it. Yoshino was equal parts horrified and delighted. Mayu was just horrified and had been fielding teasing texts from both Torii and Kiba all day.

“They’ll never let this go at the station,” she’d moaned pitifully into his chest that morning. “I’ll be Detective Sparkle Princess forever.”

Shikamaru smiled at the reporter and she blushed, earning a scowl from Mayu. Yoshino stepped forward to say something since Shikamaru had to be bribed to talk to the press and she was running out of days off to give him. “It’s true. She came to tryouts and he just knew she was the one.”

The reporter barely resisted a swoon. “That’s so romantic. After all these years of refusing to date another skater, too! Yet here you are.”

“Well, technically I’m a detective,” Mayu muttered and squeaked when he pinched her lightly in warning. Vanessa the reporter ignored her.

“It’s like a fairy tale!”

Mayu stared at the woman, expression petulant as she no-doubt realized this would only fan the flames of her new nickname at the station.

Shikamaru had to work not to laugh. “It sure seems that way,” he said with a shrug and Mayu sent him a betrayed look. “She’s gorgeous enough to be a princess, don’t you think?”

All three of them turned and took in her ferocious scowl and Vanessa’s smile faltered. “Um. Yes. Just beautiful. Well, it looks like it’s about time for you to go on, so I won’t keep you. Good luck!”

They both moved to put on their skates. Mayu was still sulking when they got to the ice. “You don’t want to be my princess?” he asked and stuck out his lower lip.

She elbowed him, but he saw her lips turn up in the corners. “You’re such a jerk,” she muttered.

“I’m your jerk.”

Her smile seemed to light up the room around them. He stumbled slightly as they moved out on the ice, unable to quite take his eyes off of her, and she giggled. Then they were moving to the middle of the rink and she was standing confidently by his side with no sign of nerves.

“Ready?” he whispered as he moved up behind her and took her hands in his own.

“Yeah. Let’s do this.” The pop song his mother had chosen began playing over the speakers and they moved in tandem.

He knew thirty seconds in that they were going to nail it. Their steps didn’t falter and adrenaline kept him from feeling the bruises beneath his clothes. The crowd cheered when they landed their double axel and someone screamed, “Go Detective Sparkle Princess!” as they whooshed past.

Shikamaru really hoped Mayu hadn’t heard that. He threw her into the air and she held her form perfectly until he caught her. When they hit the death spiral, the hand switch was flawless and the arena exploded into cheers again.

He caught sight of her wide smile just as they dipped into their spin, each holding one foot in the air as they moved faster and faster, picking up speed along with the tempo of the song. When they finally came to a stop at the end of their set, Mayu dipped back in his arms, the arena was silent for a long second before the cheers began.

“We are awesome,” Mayu breathed as he pulled her up to stand next to him. His breath was coming in deep pants and his whole body was tingling with the thrill of a perfectly executed set.

They skated off the ice and sat in the box, holding hands and staring up at the board. Temari and Yoshino had joined them and they were all huddled together. They had been the last pair, so their score was the deciding one. He stared for a long minute once the numbers popped up. He’d assumed they’d place high enough to move on, but this...

“Second place. That - that’s okay, right?” Mayu said and they all broke out of their daze.

He turned to her and stood, lifting her in his arms and spinning around. She laughed and Temari and Yoshino let out identical screams of happiness.

“Sweetheart, that’s  _amazing._ I honestly thought we’d be lucky to get third with how little time we had to train.” Her eyes were bright from where she was looking down at him and he didn’t pull away when she pressed her lips to his.

The crowd whistled and cheered and Yoshino groaned. “Honestly, you couldn’t wait until we were off the big camera?” But she was smiling and Temari was trying not to cry in relief and it was hard to worry about things like that right then.

He and Temari were going to nationals. “You really saved my ass, Detective Sparkle Princess,” he said and grinned up into her glare.

“Yeah, well. You’re welcome. Call me that again and you can sleep on the floor.”

He mimed zipping his mouth shut and throwing away the key as they moved out of the view of the cameras. He leaned down and kissed her right below her ear on the mole there and she shivered in his arms.

“What do you say we get out of here, Detective?”

Mayu smiled up at him and wrapped her arms around his neck. His heart gave an enthusiastic thump in his chest at the blatant adoration in her gaze. “Ready when you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da! That was so much fun to write and share with you all! Thanks for reading, if you're feeling up to a comment you know I love and appreciate them. Either way, thanks for continuing to read these two crazy kids' adventures. You're all awesome. :)


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